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Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

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Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#41

Post by _delirium »

meterplech wrote: post #39
teej wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it may seem that way on the surface, but the proponents of this bill are larger than you think. The MPAA represents companies with a combined market cap of $250 billion dollars. That's small enough for us to beat, but Pfizer ($150bn market cap) and Microsoft ($220bn market cap) are also major proponents. All together, there's a LOT of muscle behind this act, lobbyists alone aren't going to cut it.

Not to sound naive here- but why does Microsoft support this if all the others don't?

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) seems to be in favor: http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archiv...

Its members are made up of mainly non-web technology companies that sell expensive products and are worried about piracy or counterfeiting of those products: Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, etc. Conversely, they don't run user-generated-content sites like YouTube or Facebook, so aren't worried about the problems with weakening safe harbors.

Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#43

Post by fmota »

_delirium wrote: post #41
meterplech wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound naive here- but why does Microsoft support this if all the others don't?

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) seems to be in favor: http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archiv... Its members are made up of mainly non-web technology companies that sell expensive products and are worried about piracy or counterfeiting of those products: Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, etc. Conversely, they don't run user-generated-content sites like YouTube or Facebook, so aren'…

Allow me to be cynical but, if SOPA passes and breaks the Internet, these software companies would gain a lot. Especially Microsoft. Remember the "good old days" of Microsoft Everything? I hope you're as fond of them as these software companies seem to be.

Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#44

Post by Wilduck »

redthrowaway wrote: post #26
jrockway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With great power comes great responsibility. If Google uses their core product for every political battle they need to engage in, it cheapens the brand. SOPA is evil, but it's not going to severely injure Google. So it's not worth cheapening their product for.

While I agree with you that they need to be careful not to cheapen their brand, I'd argue that they have a history of displaying custom doodles for far less significant things. A simple "stop censorship" doodle, akin to those being displayed by a number of other websites, would go a long way without cheapening Google's brand.

The difference is that the doodles are not coercing people into action. If you remember, there was a significant backlash when Google added the seemingly sweet "call your father" reminder on Fathers' Day. I can't imagine that this would be much different/better.

Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#45

Post by krschultz »

bobbles wrote: post #23

95% of people would look at that wall of text and turn the page.. they really needed something that would actually draw in peoples attention if they want it to get noticed

The 5% that read it are the ones who influence policy in Washington. The most powerful thing on that page is not the text - it's the logos on the bottom. The average senator can not tell you the difference between a DNS server and a Warez server, but they know who Facebook, Google, eBay, et al are.

Remember, there are a lot of people out there who go to Google and type in www.gmail.com into the search box on a daily basis. To them, Google IS the internet.

Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#46

Post by un1xl0ser »

jrockway wrote: post #27
thematt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Microsoft is in the same market as at least 5 of those companies listed.

SOPA is largely an anti-counterfeiting bill. Microsoft does not want people to be able to buy counterfeit versions of Windows, so they support this bill. Google, on the other hand, doesn't make anything that can be counterfeited, so they have nothing to gain from this bill. They do have a lot to lose (with all the censorship provisions), so they are taking a stand against the bill.

I agree that's what they are pushing it for, but they seem to want to apply the same hammers to counterfeiting of physical goods and digital copyright infringement. Physical goods and media are very different.

The lost-income argument of this needs to be battled, because I doubt that everyone buying fake rolexes at $200 each is going to be saving up for the real deal. I have to assume that the same type of arguments are propping up this debate. I want to know where the people that support this get these numbers from. Do people really think that by passing this legislation we will somehow get money for nothing?

Does anyone really think that this won't be applied to Wikileaks and the like...

Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#49

Post by einhverfr »

fmota wrote: post #43
_delirium wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) seems to be in favor: http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archiv... Its members are made up of mainly non-web technology companies that sell expensive products and are worried about piracy or counterfeiting of those products: Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, etc. Conversely, they don't run user-generated-content sites like YouTube or Facebook, so aren'…

Allow me to be cynical but, if SOPA passes and breaks the Internet, these software companies would gain a lot. Especially Microsoft. Remember the "good old days" of Microsoft Everything? I hope you're as fond of them as these software companies seem to be.

The paranoid security geek in me says "You know those Microsoft contributions to SAMBA lately? Could they go for a takedown order of the open source project on the allegation of copyright infringement now and make the SAMBA project fight to get their domain back?"

Re: Internet giants place full-page anti-SOPA ad in NYT

#50

Post by Joakal »

fmota wrote: post #43
_delirium wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) seems to be in favor: http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archiv... Its members are made up of mainly non-web technology companies that sell expensive products and are worried about piracy or counterfeiting of those products: Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, etc. Conversely, they don't run user-generated-content sites like YouTube or Facebook, so aren'…

Allow me to be cynical but, if SOPA passes and breaks the Internet, these software companies would gain a lot. Especially Microsoft. Remember the "good old days" of Microsoft Everything? I hope you're as fond of them as these software companies seem to be.

I hope Bill Gates with his philanthropy drive goes publicly against Microsoft company's support for censorship.
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