101–110 of 286 posts
Wow, surprising to see Visa on that list. Here's a direct link to the list on the techcrunch article. http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rouge%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...
Mastercard should be there, too. They even had a "witness" at the first hearing. Can we get a list for the companies supporting Protect IP, too? We don't want that one to slip past us, either.
" "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?" " That is a brilliant point.
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.
Considering that 95% of the National Academy of Science is atheist, the correlation is still pretty relevant.
Clueless people can be successful investors, luck is always a factor, but someone who supports SOPA probably lacks a certain technical background or ethics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they lose money to counterfeit knock offs. There are people who would sell their country's freedom for a handful of cash. I consider them un-American traitors.
Because they lose money to counterfeit knock offs. Your assumption is that if someone doesn't buy knock offs, they'll buy the real thing. Until that can be proven true, I think a better reformulation which more accurately translates the greed of these corporations is Because they feel they're not making more money due to counterfeit knock offs . The companies themselves aren't actually losing anything.
A Chanel handbag is a luxury item that, in part, is desirable simply because of its expense and thus relative scarcity—not everyone can have one. Lifestyles brands are built in large part around a carefully crafted image of their consumer, and when every 19 year old Starbucks barista making $21K/year is walking around with a knock-off Chanel handbag it’s difficult to maintain the image they’re going for. Sales drop as the real consumers flee the brand, and then the company has no choice but to market to a lower demographic. Counterfeits undermine the company by commoditizing their goods.
Since fashion brands have significantly more limited legal protections for their products than other industries, I don’t see how you could expect them to be against an act that stands to enlarge the remedies available to them to protect their brands. It was shortsighted for the media companies to try to take a sledgehammer to the Internet—since what they sell are inherently digital products for which it was inevitable that distribution would move to the Internet eventually—but apparel is a physical product that isn’t in any danger of having that happen. For that reason apparel companies don’t care about the Internet (just like you probably don’t care very much about apparel), and I can’t say I could really blame them.
This isn’t even to mention the fact that fashion design is an art, and having opportunists steal your design, completely mangle it in an attempt to make it cheaper, and then sell it as an original is in all likelihood an incredibly infuriating thing simply from the perspective of artistic purity. Again, I find it hard to blame them for wanting to stop this, given that how well the Internet works is largely irrelevant to practically everyone in the entire industry.
" "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?" " That is a brilliant 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.
" "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?" " That is a brilliant point.
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.
That's because the underlying assumptions are false. Being religious doesn't require one to be "clueless about rationality" and supporting SOPA doesn't requre the supporter to be clueless about technology -- they may as well hope to benefit from breaking the Internet.
As every regulation (the more severe, the better) it will give an advantage to established companies over startups and newcomers, maybe even allow the former to became gate-keepers of the Internet business; DMCA allowed for attempts at censorship (silencing criticism by claiming trademarks), SOPA will take it to a whole new level; supporting SOPA signals loyalty to the entertainment industry; 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.
Indeed we all should OCCUPY the capitol or the judiciary committee; inside the committee and outside. Though will 1,000s of citizens trying to save the Internet from the media be covered by the media?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But we're not talking about just any odd collection of investors. As I understand it, Y Combinator specifically relates to Internet-centric business models. SOPA seems wholly destructive to this sector of the economy.
Nevertheless, it is conceivable that a company could support SOPA while making good investments in the tech industry. Maybe they don't think SOPA will pass, and they want future business dealings with the RIAA. But that's not really the point, which is that whether or not they're good investors, they support something harmful. We're not boycotting them because we think they're bad investors. (If we thought they were…
Yes, it's conceivable.
We're not boycotting them because we think they're bad investors.
That would be reason enough for me.
If we thought they were bad investors, why did we do business with them in the first place?
Perhaps you weren't aware of this aspect of their decision-making process.
We're doing it because they are allied with our enemies and we want to hurt them for that.
Meh. I think a much stronger position is:
We depend on a free Internet and a stable DNS and are just not going to do business with those who try to jack around with it. - and - If you don't "get" why net censorship and ISP domain blocking in particular are spectacularly dumb ideas then you probably aren't in that top tier of cluefulness that we're wanting to recruit.
These are two independent positions that compliment each other well I think.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
GoDaddy's official Twitter account is currently robo-replying with "We encourage you to visit our blog to view the details of our position on SOPA: http://x.co/c0q4 , so I doubt they were "tricked".
Of course not. I know enough of their business practice to know they were willing participants, but one has to wonder what they thought they would gain by enlisting. It looks kinda naive to me.
ordering the registry to transfer domain names to GoDaddy and ordering GoDaddy to update the DNS records
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are, by definition, no good scientists who allow their religious beliefs to dictate their science. Some religious people are able to separate their personal irrationality from their professional rationality, and that's just fine.
By what definition? There are quite a few historical scientists who made great discoveries, who very extremely religious too. Newton comes to mind.