A) GoDaddy has nurtured a lot of ill will over the years, whether due to poor customer service, a sloppy user experience, or their absurd corporate culture of using bikini babes and right wing politics to sell, of all things, domain name registration and hosting.
B) Internet users can (relatively easily) transfer domain names. It's something they can go do right now, without much fuss and without having to police their own day to day purchasing habits.
C) GoDaddy, unlike the other businesses on the SOPA supporters list, is not a purveyor of intellectual property with a legitimate interest in preventing counterfeiting.
D) GoDaddy, as a technology business and self-proclaimed "innovator", should know better than the others, who have the dubious defense of being ignorant of how this stuff works.
The thing I can't help but wonder is whether the average NFL or ESPN viewer would just sit tight if they knew their internet was about to get a lot more limited and/or expensive?
My point is that if the law is really as bad as we think it is (and it is), then defeating it shouldn't be more than a problem of explaining the law to people. And the Gandhian in me can't help but wonder whether simply informing them is enough?
"Dear America. ESPN & the NFL are about to take away your free porn -- love, Google"
E) A large fraction of GoDaddy's customers know what DNS is and what SOPA would mean. If every Walmart customer who knew what DNS was walked out, Walmart wouldn't feel it. GoDaddy is noticing this.
GoDaddy is uniquely influential because they're an Internet company. Members of Congress aren't surprised to find movie studios supporting a bill like SOPA. But when an Internet company does, it gives the bill a (false) appearance of broader support. Which is presumably why GoDaddy was recruited by whoever recruited them.
PG, I know you aren't inviting them to your demo day, but I hope you can commit to not not doing business with the law firms on this list and also not sharing law firms with these old-media dinosaurs like ESPN and the NFL.
If ESPN hires a law firm to write this bad law which will likely hurt your business in the future, doesn't it make sense to advise your clients to not hire that same law firm? As someone who has worked with both, it's clear that the Entrenched Big Law model & the Disruptive Startup Model are obviously incompatible and the more we can do to move away from these conflicted monoliths the better we can actually affect real reform.
This will require some work and likely even severing an old business relationship or two, but these small changes from someone like you and a peer or 2 can have immeasurable effect. 1 Paul Graham taking business away from 1 Big Law Firm will do more than thousands of us can.
By and large, the law firms shouldn't be on the list. Some lawyers wrote a letter arguing that the Constitutional concerns around SOPA are non-issues; Rep. Lamar Smith and co. used that letter as a basis for including many of the firms on the official list of SOPA supporters.
This does not change the fact that ESPN's law firm working with other big law firms wrote large chunks of this bad law just the way their clients wanted it.
Or that lawyers at law firms don't just willy-nilly write or sign these letters for free, they do it on behalf of their SOPA-supporting clients while receiving a paycheck from the law firm who their SOPA-supporting-client has hired.
Again, that's why I made the point about sharing law firms. All it's saying is "I'm not doing business with these lawyers who I think are being paid by clients to help them censor the internet."
And though the law firm isn't saying "our entire law firm supports this law," they are saying "our lawyer looked at this law for our client and she did find constitutional problems with it even though that is not the position of the entire firm." As I explained below I can understand why the latter isn't so troubling to some but I think the incentives these firms face are the same once they are in the business of protecting ESPN's interests.
And it will not change the fact that startups not working with ESPNs law firm will 1 - Give business to lawyers who do believe censoring the internet is unconstitutional & 2 - Remove an obvious and blatant conflict of interest.
I'm just saying, do we really want our startups to be working with the same network of big law firms that helped Disney extend copyright law duration to infinity 100 years ago? These big law firms obviously have their interests in protecting old streams of business -- I would too.
The point is that the firms themselves were not behind SOPA. If you're suggesting that we shouldn't deal with any businesses that employ anyone who supports SOPA, I think you're a little off the rails here. That won't help anything and just makes us look unreasonable.
These aren't just employees who signed these letters independently. They were asked by a client to sign onto the letter which agrees with the clients interests. They sign these precisely because the client of the firm paid them to. While I was at a firm we signed onto letters or drafted our own for clients all the time (and it was precisely b/c it helped get the laws through, so call it what you want -- i know I don't mind "support" though I can see how some object to the technicality). In laymen's terms, client shows up and says "we need this law to go through we'd like to hire a lawyer to write an independent legal opinion letter to the court to help them make their decision. Or maybe you guys can sign on to this guy's already written letter? We'll pay you for it, of course."
The techdirt article points this out too. When there's a law up for debate which a client wants to get through they try to get these letters in to make it more likely the law will pass. And yes this is different from official "support" which is saying "we the law firm want this law to pass." This is more like "our lawyer looked at this for our client and he does not think it's unconstitutional though this is not the position of the entire firm." To me, that's still bad but I completely understand if others are okay with it. Reasonable men can and do disagree about a lot of things.
Law firms aren't supposed to take on clients with conflicting interests. If a firm has helped one of their clients lobby in support of SOPA, they shouldn't accept clients who depend on fair use or DMCA Safe Harbor.
well should is a strong word. and if you are a startup it's very possible that you don't depend on a fair use / DMCA Safe Harbor argument now but will in the unpredictable future so it's unlikely a client will ever get rejected for that potential conflict.
Is it really wise to get in bed with ESPN in the first place? that's all I'm saying. I am not and will not be the first to argue that sharing lawyers with those on opposite sides of important legislation with you is a bad idea.
"""I'm just saying, do we really want our startups to be working with the same network of big law firms that helped Disney extend copyright law duration to infinity 100 years ago? These big law firms obviously have their interests in protecting old business -- I would too."""
The law firms care about what their clients care about. If a startup is paying them, they care about the startup's concerns.
The problem lies with the legislators, lobbyists and big media companies --not with lawyers.
It's like arguing you wouldn't want to do business with a lawyer who works with murderers and such! Well, the whole point of the law system is that EVERYONE gets their defense.
Hear, hear! Anybody that argues otherwise should familiarise themselves with the cab rank rule - "the obligation of a barrister to accept any work in a field in which he professes himself competent to practise, at a court at which he normally appears and at his usual rates. In the absence of such a rule it might be difficult for an unpopular person to obtain legal representation, and barristers who act for such people might be criticised for doing so."
My point is simply that if a startup is paying a law firm & that ESPN is paying a law firm then maybe the law firm cares more about ESPN's business in case of conflicts. I do not think that is as unreasonable as your hysterical response makes it out to be.
They are not saying "we the firm support SOPA" but they are saying "our lawyer looked at this law for our client and he finds it constitutional though this is not the position of the entire firm." I can understand if you're not disturbed by the latter but I think a simple incentive analysis should make it clear why I'm not the first to argue against sharing law firms with those on the opposite sides of controversial issues facing the court.
A simple hypothetical should explain it: ESPN wants SOPA, they get their lawyer to sign a letter which says the law looks fine. Let's say the law threatens the startup's business at the same time, maybe the law firm isn't as likely to write or sign a letter arguing against the law if it means it upsets ESPN. End result, more lawyers at these firms sign on to SOPA and you end up with what appears like considerably more support for that side from the legal community simply b/c bigger clients support the law than those that oppose it.
Really -- my point is simply that you don't need to hire a 5000 lawyer firm who also represents ESPN & the NFL when a 20 lawyer firm will do. I believe that is in line with the startup ethic as well.
And again that's not my point at all to not work with lawyers who work with murderers -- your statement of my position is a straw man at best and a dishonest mischaracterization at worst. I'm not saying ESPN did anything wrong here -- I'm saying ESPN disagrees with your startup's positions and it is paying that law firm to do what it can to win and hold their position. Maybe it's not a good idea to hire the firm if you don't like the law, you know?
"""My point is simply that if a startup is paying a law firm & that ESPN is paying a law firm then maybe the law firm cares more about ESPN's business in case of conflicts."""
That would be a case of mis-representation of your interests, and the lawyer/firm could face serious legal consequences.
"""I do not think that is as unreasonable as your hysterical response makes it out to be."""
You keep using that word, "hysterical". I don't think it means what you think it means.
"""They are not saying "we the firm support SOPA" but they are saying "our lawyer looked at this law for our client and he finds it constitutional though this is not the position of the entire firm." I can understand if you're not disturbed by the latter but I think a simple incentive analysis should make it clear why I'm not the first to argue against sharing law firms with those on the opposite sides of controversial issues facing the court. A simple hypothetical should explain it: ESPN wants SOPA, they get their lawyer to sign a letter which says the law looks fine. Let's say the law threatens the startup's business at the same time, maybe the law firm isn't as likely to write or sign a letter arguing against the law if it means it upsets ESPN. End result, more lawyers at these firms sign on to SOPA and you end up with what appears like considerably more support for that side from the legal community simply b/c bigger clients support the law than those that oppose it."""
Hmm. Not really familiar with how the legal system works, are we?
This was a perfect storm where private, online outrage was easily channeled into public action, encouraging others to join in. It didn't hurt that NameCheap and their PR department was out there milking it, either. Hopefully it's a wake-up call to the other SOPA supporters who may suffer the same fate invisibly, when outraged geeks stop recommending Sony gear to friends asking for recommendations or things like that.
No self-respecting geek would ever recommend any Sony gear anyway. Their hardware arm is a slave to the content-producing arm, who has been crippling new devices with broken DRM since the 90s.
True, Sony gear is utter crap, but things like lost recommendations are too invisible to make other people take notice. While a few people will chime in on any thread to mention that they, too, have been boycotting Sony since the rootkit, it's hard to get any sense of who is doing what.
Contrast that with GoDaddy, where outsiders can tell how many domains moved, how much of an exodus is average, who made good on their promise to move.
I think that you are giving people too much credit. Switching domain registrars has virtually no impact for those who register domain names. Not watching certain movies or television shows or having to avoid certain video games is asking too much of most people.
You are stating another reason more than refuting his. I'm not disagreeing with your reason but his point is that this is big from Congress' perspective as we can now safely say that there are 0 internet companies in support of this. Whereas before Congress saw a mixed signal they now see unison in one of our country's most important growth industries. And that is big.
And I don't know if you've transfered domains before but I didn't have a good time doing it. Though it was not difficult I think we've seen some tremendous overstatements in this thread as to how easy it actually works out in practice.
And for me at least it's not that it not difficult to not watch ESPN. People don't live in a world without choices -- usually when they buy Battlefield they are also considering MW3 or the Batman game. There are some die-hard fans but also a lot of us that like football but are perfectly happy watching an episode or two of Breaking Bad instead if that's on. The NFL needs casual fans too, and those are the ones we should think about when we think about boycotts. Of course it will seem hopeless if you think about the guy with his face painted blue but I'm asking you to think of the guy flipping channels at home.
You only need to sway opinion a tiny little bit to change things considerably -- this is why boycotts work so damn well. The hardest thing to get over the common cynical attitude that "people won't do it, therefore we should not try."
(you should check out some Gandhi -- he explains far better than I ever can why boycotts aren't just effective but arguably the most effective tool that ordinary citizens have, and also almost always much easier to execute than we think they are)
I know a bunch of sports fans of all sorts but mostly I know me, and I know that I have a DVR & all kinds of netflix videos to catch up on that compete for my (damn-near-zero) entertainment time with the NFL. Personally I gave up the NFL as a result of this -- so maybe I'm a bad example. And I'm done with ESPN too. Really, I haven't noticed in the week that has gone by so far. And I love sports -- I'll watch NBA and MLB games and my life will be quite alright. I'll even play sports videogames & read about sports & watch sports news on television & I will do it without watching ESPN or the NFL.
So I'll give you that the freaks won't switch but I don't think you'll give me that the casual fans will if they associate the NFL or ESPN with these bad things.
Out of curiosity, would you be able to give up ESPN or the NFL or even one of those things? I'm not saying give up everything, but can't you see that if everyone who was upset even chose one company to boycott that it would do something?
I strongly support "focused fire" -- picking a small number of influential and easily-targeted businesses (or members of Congress) and targeting them with everything we've got. It's an optimal strategy for creating press hits, exactly like this one, which publicize our cause.
My non-technical mother asked me today what SOPA was, and is now opposed to it -- when yesterday she hadn't heard of it at all -- because she saw an article in the news about the GoDaddy boycott. This is what success looks like.
The reason GoDaddy is being punished is because it requires no real sacrifice, and makes people feel like activists from the comfort of their chair. Transferring a domain requires no real effort, and downtime to the business is almost nil (not to mention the cost is non-existent if your domain is already expiring).
Let's look at some of the SOPA supporters: Timer Warner, Pfizer, Viacom, The Walt-Disney Company, and Wal-Mart.
Are people ready to boycott these companies and their subsidiaries? I don't think so.
I applaud companies that decided to move away from GoDaddy, but I wonder if they would've done the same thing had there been a financial loss as a result.
Real change will come when people decide to stop supporting companies that introduce these idiotic laws.
GoDaddy was a very easy, even painless, target. Switch to another registrar, done. The user only loses a bit of time, and in the end still is fully operation and the "boycott" doesn't directly affect them.
Ideally we'd be boycotting Nintendo, EA, CBS, etc as well. But that would mean actual sacrifice from people.
There are relatively few other companies on the list the average internet (power) user can boycott effectively. How am I supposed to boycott Nike or Reebok? I buy shoes like once every two years. Should I write an angry blogpost a year or two from now when I pointedly buy a non-Nike shoe?
(As an aside, why the hell are Nike or the Ford Motor Company supporting SOPA? Is it one of their subsidiaries, or just corporate solidarity?)
An effective boycott needs to be noticeable, and that means either terminating a subscription or stopping an extremely regular (daily or weekly, perhaps monthly if it's substantial enough) purchase. The only other company on the list which seems vulnerable to that sort of boycott -- unless there are far more people picking up something weekly from Tiffany's than there should be -- is Time Warner. Terminating your cable service is a very immediate, noticeable act. If as many people terminated their TWC service as transfered domains away from GoDaddy, I think it would make some headlines.
Of course, internet service is pretty screwed up in most markets. Many people don't have a choice of (high-speed) internet service provider at all, so protesting TWC probably requires turning off your internet entirely, which is pretty hard to manage. So really, GoDaddy is probably the only company on the list which can be effectively boycotted.
That, and GoDaddy is one that many internet users are primary customers. We can try to boycott Wal-mart, but most of their customers are not ones that know what SOPA is, let alone that Wal-Mart supports it.
For Ford, I'd imagine it is the same reason Fender is on that list. Somebody owns a lot of stock elsewhere (Fender was owned by CBS until they bought themselves out from under, but I'd imagine a significant number of shareholders still hold stock in both).
This SOPA support was the straw that broke the camel's back.
Call this anecdotal if you will, but GoDaddy always occupied that "necessary evil" for domain registration in my brain. If others on HN are at all like me, they probably have > 75% of their registered domains sitting and doing nothing. GoDaddy's tasteless ads, horrible UX, shutdowns of domains due to "good faith" complaints...this was just the final incentive to call it quits. Predictably irrational, absolutely - guilty as charged.
Why necessary? I distinctly remember avoiding GoDaddy due to their awful reputation when registering domains over a decade ago. The alternatives have always been available. I'm puzzled as to why so many people used them to begin with.
They're the cheapest, or close to it, though they make it up with all kinds of other tricks. I think it's really just that simple for a lot of people who don't know or don't care about all the other stuff.
Sure, we know about them, but other people are looking for the lowest price they can find on a search for 'cheap domain registration'.
True. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm surprised how many technically knowledgeable people used them. This site is full of people talking about moving away. Wikimedia used them! I can see why Joe Random would, but it makes no sense to me that someone who knows what they're doing would.
It's funny because their marketing is exactly one of the reasons why I have never even considered them. But I am probably not the target market. Or am I? (straight male)
The reason I've been more spurred to action over GoDaddy's involvement is twofold:
1) I'm not surprised that the record labels and movie publishers want this law. I am very surprised that a technology company who should be impacted by this law (but aren't, because of a special exemption) would support it, and it shows irresponsibility at best. At worst, they want to use it to stifle competitors. GoDaddy, as a technology company, has more reputation on technological matters to Congress, and is therefore in a position of severe abdication of responsibility. They aren't just a dying industry trying to legislate their survival - they're a traitor from "our" industry who have sided with the Bad Guys.
2) There are a lot of very easy-to-use alternatives to GoDaddy. I can't very easily just pick up and stop using Visa and Mastercard - I'm dismayed that they appear on the supporters list (and frankly, I'm a bit surprised; it increases costs and decreases revenues for them. Feels like they're being squeezed), but there aren't easy alternatives. To be clear, I'm not talking about credit cards here - I'm talking about my debit card, for which Mastercard is the processor. Carrying cash around is both risky and impractical in many cases, and I still have to do business online somehow. Compared to those, I can easily just pick up and leave GoDaddy and never do business with them again.
I wish that I could easily boycott every company involved in supporting SOPA. Many of them can't be as cut out as easily as GoDaddy can, but I'm happy to start with the low-hanging fruit and work up from there.
I was a GoDaddy customer for a very long time - back when they had decent geek cred (yes, that was a very long time ago). They've always provided good customer service to me, personally. The sexist ads were distasteful, but didn't bother me enough to cost them my business - sex sells, and it always has. Bob Parsons shooting an elephant was likewise distasteful, but that's Bob Parsons being a guy that I don't want to have over for dinner, not GoDaddy launching an initiative to hunt elephants to extinction. However, GoDaddy's support of SOPA, as a company is GoDaddy being an entity that I don't want to be involved with, and don't want to lend any financial means to. That's why I left. I wasn't looking for an excuse to leave, and frankly, it's financially costly and a pain in the ass to move a bunch of domains, but I couldn't ignore it, given the reasons enumerated above.
And if one is loyal to consumer products that have much more of a everyday influence but support that bill... well then it gets even harder. Looking at this list, I would have to stop playing any EA game (and I have played NHL games for over 15 years straight), listening/buying music from a bunch of bands (as they might be under some of these record labels), stop following the NFL or paying for any tickets to their games, stop buying any books from Penguin, never buy a Pfizer made drug, give up Time/Warner cable even though there isn't any other option in my area, and give up my Mastercard/Visa card. And that's probably just the tip of the iceberg.
The headline is a bit misleading as the article spends barely any time with the question.
However there are a few decent reasons: GoDaddy was apparently involved in crafting the bill, GoDaddy apparently is exempt from the bill, GoDaddy wasn't well-liked by the HN/Reddit set in the first place, GoDaddy is one of the more internet-centric companies on the list.
I'm already boycotting Sony over other things, so I can't very well say I'm boycotting them over this.
Walmart, too.
EA, too. (Stupid intrusive DRM. I'm missing a lot of potentially good games here!)
Nintendo? Ouch. That one's going to be painful... Oh wait. No, I only buy like 1 game a year from them anyhow.
Warner Music might be tough... I don't buy much US-based music any more, though.
And the rest I never use anyhow.
So the answer the question? People are either already boycotting them, avoiding them as much as they can, or just don't buy their stuff anyhow. At least, those people who would boycott over ethical concerns, anyhow. Those who don't boycott, they don't boycott anyhow!
The one thing I dont understand is why are gaming companies showing public support of SOPA. They should know that the trend-setters in gaming industry are geeks and nerds who are all very aware of how internet works and how SOPA may potentially drain the life out of it. Also, a lot of gamers are tech-savvy enough that they will start pirating their games just to spite them.
Safety in numbers. Sony and Nintendo are both on this. They're counting on nerds being reflexively unwilling to switch to Microsoft on a matter of principle, even though Microsoft seems to be the least evil of the three.
I've always hated GoDaddy for their terrible advertisements but I've had decent service for them, so their support of SOPA was a reason for me to finally leave them. Maybe I'm not the only one that feels that way.
Someone should make an app which lets us scan bar codes to know if the manufacturer is a SOPA supporter. This could also be extended to help with other things. For example, if you care a lot about animal rights it might help you avoid supporting companies abusing animals, to include suggesting alternative products.
Supporters like Adobe, Autodesk? If there was good alternatives to these 2, the price of their product alone, would be enough to make us run away. Only now, open-source alternatives are getting at their level, so...
Supporters like Microsoft? So much commercial software is made exclusively to Microsoft, that is impossible for some of us, to change. I'm glad I did, but let's not kid ourselves. Microsoft has a monopoly on property software
Supporters like Apple? What are you going to do? Drop your brand-new gadgets? Stop buying? Their main business is hardware. Not only it is expensive to replace, it has also a big niche of Apple-only software that is favored by a lot of people.
A lot of Anti-Virus are supporting SOPA as well. If Internet newbies start not using anti-virus...well I don't even want to know.
Hardware companies like Intel, Siemens, Dell...Hard to replace, etc etc.
I could go on and on, but the main points are taken. And the main problem, is that a lot of products are really hard to replace. And some people just can't afford it.
And that is today's World. Now stop making conspiracy theories against Google, and side them on this!
While this is a good point, concerted efforts against GoDaddy isn't a bad thing. The only way corporations will feel anything is if the entire Internet focuses on them -- we need to focus on one thing at a time and not spread ourselves across too many targets.
The problem is the internet has a very short attention span. I would be very surprised if a solid boycott against another SOPA supporting company happened.
The product that GoDaddy offers is a commodity. You can get domain registration with hundreds of companies unlike the NFL which offers a very unique product. Also GoDaddy has been harboring a lot of ill will with things like hidden fees over the years.
Also the fact that Godaddy has had their fair share of bad PR over the past year, there seems to be a pretty bad feeling against them anyway - this just gave everyone another excuse!
A) GoDaddy has nurtured a lot of ill will over the years, whether due to poor customer service, a sloppy user experience, or their absurd corporate culture of using bikini babes and right wing politics to sell, of all things, domain name registration and hosting.
B) Internet users can (relatively easily) transfer domain names. It's something they can go do right now, without much fuss and without having to police their own day to day purchasing habits.
C) GoDaddy, unlike the other businesses on the SOPA supporters list, is not a purveyor of intellectual property with a legitimate interest in preventing counterfeiting.
D) GoDaddy, as a technology business and self-proclaimed "innovator", should know better than the others, who have the dubious defense of being ignorant of how this stuff works.