The House Judiciary supporters list is chock-full of lawyers -- one-seventh of the list has the string 'LLP' -- and therein lies a major target of opportunity for the technology industry. I doubt anyone will change their counsel over this, but they can make them explain their position.
Let every tech industry CEO, CFO and board member call their most senior contact at a supporting firm. Ask them to explain their position, ask them to explain how this _won't_ break DNS, how the precedents set here won't spread to other policy questions or countries. Don't get into balancing one industry or another -- just make them demonstrate a reasonable layperson understanding of how the internet works. The last thing a partner wants is to sound less than informed on the core technologies in their industry of expertise. If nothing else they'll have to go to school on the question.
No doubt many such partners will say they get it but the firm is larger than they are. And that's the point of a law firm, isn't it, you hire one because it provides quick access to expertise on a wide variety of subjects. But if that larger firm doesn't understand the tech business, just how prepared are they to handle technology problems in various corners of the law? Ask the M&A guy, the financing guy, the tax guy, to explain how SOPA won't break DNS.
I don't know where tech billings compare with movie and recording industry. But they aren't small: M&A, financings, patent, etc etc ad nauseum. Beyond that, the network and technology are the core of how business and industry are changing. Maybe these firms stand to gain from SOPA over the next five years. But can they, can the individual partners, afford to misunderstand the technologies that will be driving more and more clients over time? Get on the phone, not to argue, but to make them understand that they are showing an ignorance that could leave them behind.
I was extremely alarmed to see our firm, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, on that list and immediately emailed my attorney (a partner) about it.
Turns out two of their attorneys agreed to lend their names AS PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS and made it clear their support was in no way representative of the views of the firm. Despite that, DWT got added to the list.
Before we go off half-cocked here, let's take a minute and ask ourselves how good a plan that relies on lawyer's being embarassed to have to argue both sides of an issue can be?
Firms do not usually take stances on legislative matters their own. SOPA's passage significantly benefits firms' activity levels and in turn the revenue produced in the furtherance of protecting their clients' rights. While outward facing corporate positions may take a neutral or negative stance on SOPA, many overt and implicit stances are taken by their respective counsel. SOPA claims made via premptive cease and desist letters or active litigation may or may not claim SOPA in their position statements to prevent drawing clear relationships between their clients and SOPA. Most agreements come with gag clauses to further protect and guarantee the cat doesn't get out of the bag. Unfortunately, firms are notoriously good for keeping secrets, so I am not expecting Wikipedia like bombshells connecting brand X to SOPA support.
All though I sympathize with your argument, it seems to be based on "reasoning". Reasoning is the one thing this government/industry ins't interested in.
I've seen the argument: if someone is so clueless about rationality as to be religious, how could they make a good scientist? And the "answer" is: nevertheless, there exist religious people who do good science.
So I'm not convinced by the argument here. It makes too many unstated assumptions.
I support this boycott, and this argument might make good rhetoric, but I wouldn't use it directly to evaluate investors.
Because they have a checkbook? Does General Dynamics care if pacifists buy their stock?
Since YC doesn't seem to sell to media-providers I suppose they won't be losing much, but seriously? If GE wrote me a billion dollar check, I'd take it no matter my politics.
I'm curious: does not allowing SOPA-supporting companies at YC Demo Day mean the SOPA-supporting companies won't be investing in YC companies? I am not familiar with the process; is this just cutting them out of the very first round, or is something being done to prevent SOPA-supporting companies from investing at all?
That's not really fair. The people who run corporations have a fiduciary responsibility. (There are of course caveats, and we can argue all day over whether or not SOPA is unconstitutional or otherwise illegal, but you get the point.)
If you are a movie studio, SOPA is a great idea for your bottom line.
I don't think it's fair to call everyone who is in favor of SOPA either evil or stupid, even if SOPA itself is both. I can understand why YC wouldn't want them around, but I can't necessarily say they wouldn't be good investors.
PG, a request; demand INTERNET FREEDOM bills support from SOPA turncoats?
Otherwise, we'll go through this shit again [0][1][2][3] until compromises are made. Which I'm sure is from quite an effective tactic [4]. At the moment, it seems to be a lot of 'pacifist' movements to STOP SOPA when they can go to war against the anti-INTERNET FREEDOM supporters by demanding INTERNET FREEDOM bills.
After all, if they change the bill to be about stopping rogue sites selling child pornography with same wording except replacing piracy words; are you going to publicly say STOP CHILD PORN act supporting companies are no longer allowed at YC Demo Day?
Actually, if you read the article and linked letter, you will see that this list does not seem to come from any explicit support of SOPA. Instead, anyone on this list and not on the official judiciary list linked above comes from a letter[1] not stating support for SOPA but rather petitioning Congress to "enact carefully balanced rogue sites legislation this year."
From the linked article:
"This list is derived from two sources: the official list (pdf) of SOPA supporters from the Judiciary Committee’s website, and a letter (pdf) addressed to Congress from the Global Intellectual Property Center, which is an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce."
Some of these companies are just so random... Why, for instance, does Adidas, L'Oreal, American Apparel, Rite Aid, Pfizer, etc. even have a stance on SOPA? I was rather disconcerted to see that Elsevier was on this list :(
I glanced at that list quickly even before I was aware of the boycott. Many of those names are just random non-tech related companies, but I couldn't help but think that GoDaddy sticks out like a sore thumb on it. Almost as if they were tricked into joining.
Gauntlet officially thrown down. I respect PG even more for taking a stand on this. Now we need to figure out the best way to get people opposed to SOPA on a grand scale. No disrespect to the HN community, but I wonder how much of an impact we really have had thus far. Tumblr, Reddit, and Mozilla have done a fairly good job of this, but they are not large enough to do it on their own. Next we need Google and Facebook to get more involved as I think that would make awareness of this issue skyrocket. Any thoughts on pragmatic approaches to getting the public more involved?
1) Adjust the movement to be about INTERNET FREEDOM, not SOPA. This is because the bill can be delayed/stopped til there's an anti-child porn bill with similar wording.
eg "Demand INTERNET FREEDOM bills to replace the ANTI-INTERNET bills [of SOPA, PROTECT-IP, DMCA, etc]"
2) Having INTERNET FREEDOM bills would make it impossible for laws like SOPA to pass. As a bonus, compromises can be made while having some INTERNET FREEDOM. Whereas with SOPA, they're watering down some parts that still lead to ANTI-INTERNET. Which further encourages ANTI-INTERNET supporters to make huge demands. It's a technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
3) Find Congress people that love Internet. I hope there's a few! Ask if they can be the mascots, the INTERNET messiah, etc.
4) Copy and paste SOPA to start with. Replace the words to protect INTERNET instead. This is a delicious backfire of using someone's work and their own weapons against them.
5) Add a way for people to be excepted from the movement to the services. Also allow a way for people to understand why the companies are no longer appearing politically neutral (because the anti-INTERNET bills are going to kill them).
6) Add some masking of dropped services with JS hover and non-JS side-by-side of anti-FREEDOM warning 'of increased costs to comply with the legal demands of other companies'.
7) Of course, provide a simple link to the INTERNET FREEDOM movement that has to have two different sections;
a) Simple. A video, simple acts to perform to demand and spread the information. This is an attempt to educate people with simplicity. A link is provided to advanced for more complex information.
b) Advanced. 'Nerds', that understand the terminology, and what it's about. How to demand and spread information. Also how to explain with simple education if some people don't understand.
I tried to suggest some of this to Reddit's ideas for admins but got ghostbanned and censured because apparently it's 'politics' despite Reddit's recent anti-SOPA support.
We need try and start to route around companies that are damaging the internet; and start figuring out who their collaborators are and route around them. This is a great first start, but we need to get companies like google to refuse to allow the MPAA & RIAA to use any of their value add products (gmail/calendar/etc).
Maybe all us angry nerds should OCCUPY something. Something big, related to SOPA. It would be cool to see EFF type concerns channeled into that movement.
The "Occupy" movement is a sinking ship run by anarchists. It's literally an expression of incoherent rage. I think a traditional, well-organized, on-message movement against SOPA would do a lot better than throwing in with OWS.
Occupy congress, "We demand INTERNET FREEDOM to replace SOPA [and other antiINTERNET FREEDOM bills?]".
SOPA could be renamed to SOCPA (Stop Online Child Pornography Act), then you will have a lot of hostile people towards the current and future INTERNET FREEDOM movements.
I'm virulently anti-SOPA myself, have signed all the petitions, etc. But am I the only one made uncomfortable by a blacklist of people who have expressed certain opinions?
PG: How did you arrive at this action when concerning Monsanto I understood your comments as something along the lines of "that's just the way of things work in the world of corporations"?
may be we should stop watching the movies of the supporting studios (and giving them money directly or indirectly) - much harder to do, but would be quite effective
My company has about 35 domains and SSL certs through GoDaddy. I've always loathed them but I can't justify the cost of transferring over. Is anyone offering a discounted option to jump ship?
GODADDY is acting like we're bluffing and basically challenging us to try and make a dent in their business. Read this!
Update (6:18 PM): GoDaddy seems unimpressed by the boycott so far. They made the following statement to Ars Technica: "Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations."
This seems common for anything that is rooted in new media and doesn't look like the traditional newspapers and magazine websites. You still hear the word startup used with Facebook and twitter occasionally even though they at clearly not.
So if SOPA fails to pass and stops being an issue, will that boycott end or will it continue?
Going by PG's reasoning (If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?") then it should continue until there are major changes the leaderships of those companies. Right?
That's a good question, and tough one to figure out. This applies to anyone who wants to deprive these companies of their support.
From my perspective, these attempts will not stop, and will take on new forms of bills. We have had to deal with bad bills since during the Clinton administration/Republican-controlled congress.
Some people call for 'Internet freedom' laws, but what is stopping the next congressional class from weakening or negating these laws without amending the Constitution?
My own view is that it will take a long time for these attempts to cease. Worst case, efforts will peter out until the generation who did not grow up with the Internet are no longer with us.
[+] [-] chernevik|14 years ago|reply
Let every tech industry CEO, CFO and board member call their most senior contact at a supporting firm. Ask them to explain their position, ask them to explain how this _won't_ break DNS, how the precedents set here won't spread to other policy questions or countries. Don't get into balancing one industry or another -- just make them demonstrate a reasonable layperson understanding of how the internet works. The last thing a partner wants is to sound less than informed on the core technologies in their industry of expertise. If nothing else they'll have to go to school on the question.
No doubt many such partners will say they get it but the firm is larger than they are. And that's the point of a law firm, isn't it, you hire one because it provides quick access to expertise on a wide variety of subjects. But if that larger firm doesn't understand the tech business, just how prepared are they to handle technology problems in various corners of the law? Ask the M&A guy, the financing guy, the tax guy, to explain how SOPA won't break DNS.
I don't know where tech billings compare with movie and recording industry. But they aren't small: M&A, financings, patent, etc etc ad nauseum. Beyond that, the network and technology are the core of how business and industry are changing. Maybe these firms stand to gain from SOPA over the next five years. But can they, can the individual partners, afford to misunderstand the technologies that will be driving more and more clients over time? Get on the phone, not to argue, but to make them understand that they are showing an ignorance that could leave them behind.
[+] [-] dpe82|14 years ago|reply
Turns out two of their attorneys agreed to lend their names AS PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS and made it clear their support was in no way representative of the views of the firm. Despite that, DWT got added to the list.
Incredibly dirty move on the part of Rep. Smith.
DWT has tweeted about it (http://twitter.com/#!/DWTLaw/status/150019649130606592) and tell me they are working to get their name removed from the list.
Edit: fix link
[+] [-] ArbitraryLimits|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigohms|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pan69|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burgerbrain|14 years ago|reply
That is a brilliant point.
[+] [-] philh|14 years ago|reply
So I'm not convinced by the argument here. It makes too many unstated assumptions.
I support this boycott, and this argument might make good rhetoric, but I wouldn't use it directly to evaluate investors.
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameishere|14 years ago|reply
Because they have a checkbook? Does General Dynamics care if pacifists buy their stock?
Since YC doesn't seem to sell to media-providers I suppose they won't be losing much, but seriously? If GE wrote me a billion dollar check, I'd take it no matter my politics.
[+] [-] j_s|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abalashov|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnsmurf|14 years ago|reply
If you are a movie studio, SOPA is a great idea for your bottom line.
I don't think it's fair to call everyone who is in favor of SOPA either evil or stupid, even if SOPA itself is both. I can understand why YC wouldn't want them around, but I can't necessarily say they wouldn't be good investors.
[+] [-] Joakal|14 years ago|reply
Otherwise, we'll go through this shit again [0][1][2][3] until compromises are made. Which I'm sure is from quite an effective tactic [4]. At the moment, it seems to be a lot of 'pacifist' movements to STOP SOPA when they can go to war against the anti-INTERNET FREEDOM supporters by demanding INTERNET FREEDOM bills.
After all, if they change the bill to be about stopping rogue sites selling child pornography with same wording except replacing piracy words; are you going to publicly say STOP CHILD PORN act supporting companies are no longer allowed at YC Demo Day?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_S.978
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combating_Online_Infringement_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agre...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
[+] [-] samstave|14 years ago|reply
Frankly, this is a badass stance.
And this line, as also mentioned by others, is fantastic:
"If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?"
[+] [-] gasull|14 years ago|reply
Thank you PG for doing your part. Thank you so much.
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/the-439-organizations-s...
[+] [-] blakeweb|14 years ago|reply
From the linked article: "This list is derived from two sources: the official list (pdf) of SOPA supporters from the Judiciary Committee’s website, and a letter (pdf) addressed to Congress from the Global Intellectual Property Center, which is an affiliate of the US Chamber of Commerce."
I thought this deserved clarification.
[1] http://www.theglobalipcenter.com/sites/default/files/pressre...
[+] [-] Aloisius|14 years ago|reply
I mean, their entire company was founded around a device that facilitates copyright infringement.
[+] [-] mrlase|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|14 years ago|reply
http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...
[+] [-] mekoka|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbutler|14 years ago|reply
http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...
[+] [-] Steko|14 years ago|reply
100+ commonly pirated physical products - pharma, shoes, fashion, guitars, spirits, golf clubs, etc.
50+ general manufac/retail industry concerns.
15+ law enforcement/local government trade orgs
15+ law offices
There's a number of testing and credentialing organizations, I'd guess they might be part of content but I'm really not sure.
[+] [-] mahmoudimus|14 years ago|reply
http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...
[+] [-] nextparadigms|14 years ago|reply
Can we get a list for the companies supporting Protect IP, too? We don't want that one to slip past us, either.
[+] [-] sequoia|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AdamFernandez|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joakal|14 years ago|reply
eg "Demand INTERNET FREEDOM bills to replace the ANTI-INTERNET bills [of SOPA, PROTECT-IP, DMCA, etc]"
2) Having INTERNET FREEDOM bills would make it impossible for laws like SOPA to pass. As a bonus, compromises can be made while having some INTERNET FREEDOM. Whereas with SOPA, they're watering down some parts that still lead to ANTI-INTERNET. Which further encourages ANTI-INTERNET supporters to make huge demands. It's a technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
3) Find Congress people that love Internet. I hope there's a few! Ask if they can be the mascots, the INTERNET messiah, etc.
4) Copy and paste SOPA to start with. Replace the words to protect INTERNET instead. This is a delicious backfire of using someone's work and their own weapons against them.
5) Add a way for people to be excepted from the movement to the services. Also allow a way for people to understand why the companies are no longer appearing politically neutral (because the anti-INTERNET bills are going to kill them).
6) Add some masking of dropped services with JS hover and non-JS side-by-side of anti-FREEDOM warning 'of increased costs to comply with the legal demands of other companies'.
7) Of course, provide a simple link to the INTERNET FREEDOM movement that has to have two different sections;
a) Simple. A video, simple acts to perform to demand and spread the information. This is an attempt to educate people with simplicity. A link is provided to advanced for more complex information.
b) Advanced. 'Nerds', that understand the terminology, and what it's about. How to demand and spread information. Also how to explain with simple education if some people don't understand.
I tried to suggest some of this to Reddit's ideas for admins but got ghostbanned and censured because apparently it's 'politics' despite Reddit's recent anti-SOPA support.
[+] [-] dantheman|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjurney|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philwelch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joakal|14 years ago|reply
SOPA could be renamed to SOCPA (Stop Online Child Pornography Act), then you will have a lot of hostile people towards the current and future INTERNET FREEDOM movements.
[+] [-] paul9290|14 years ago|reply
Though will 1,000s of citizens trying to save the Internet from the media be covered by the media?
[+] [-] DavidSJ|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malandrew|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mverwijs|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbanffy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vijayr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dickbasedregex|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dickbasedregex|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] webinsiders|14 years ago|reply
Update (6:18 PM): GoDaddy seems unimpressed by the boycott so far. They made the following statement to Ars Technica: "Go Daddy has received some emails that appear to stem from the boycott prompt, but we have not seen any impact to our business. We understand there are many differing opinions on the SOPA regulations."
[+] [-] robomc|14 years ago|reply
Can you call a 6 year old site, sold to a major media conglomerate, with some of the highest traffic on the net a startup?
[+] [-] robryan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mostlyListening|14 years ago|reply
Going by PG's reasoning (If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?") then it should continue until there are major changes the leaderships of those companies. Right?
[+] [-] TheCowboy|14 years ago|reply
From my perspective, these attempts will not stop, and will take on new forms of bills. We have had to deal with bad bills since during the Clinton administration/Republican-controlled congress.
Some people call for 'Internet freedom' laws, but what is stopping the next congressional class from weakening or negating these laws without amending the Constitution?
My own view is that it will take a long time for these attempts to cease. Worst case, efforts will peter out until the generation who did not grow up with the Internet are no longer with us.