NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] A Guide to Slamming SOPA Supporters - Starting With "Go Daddy" Slime
A Guide to Slamming SOPA Supporters - Starting With "Go Daddy" Slime
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000921.html
Unless you've been living under a massive pile of ancient floppy
disks, by now you're pretty well cognizant of the immense dangers in
the proposed U.S. House of Representatives SOPA (Stop Online Piracy
Act - H.R. 3261) and its similarly evil twin --- PIPA -- over on the
Senate side of Congress (Protect IP Act - S. 968).
You're also probably at least in general terms familiar with the
battle lines in this war for Internet freedom -- with the massive
entertainment conglomerates leading the charge for passage, and
essentially the entire free speech and Internet engineering/operations
community opposed.
But you may not have seen the detailed, official list of SOPA
supporters -- and it makes for very interesting and highly recommended
reading: http://j.mp/uuq90f [Gizmodo].
Whenever a list like this appears, it's very tempting to rush into
plans for attacks on the various proponents, hoping to change their
minds about their support of such legislation.
Such attacks can take various forms.
Never to be countenanced are illicit maneuvers -- email floods, denial
of service attacks, personal information disclosures, and the like.
Not only are these usually illegal and unethical, but in the long run,
serve mainly to create sympathy for the targeted organizations, and
ultimately play into their dirty hands.
The existence of a SOPA supporters list also immediately suggests the
use of legal boycott techniques against the listed parties, and in
this respect the calculus is considerably more subtle and complex.
Generally speaking, boycotts have not proven to be a particularly
effective mechanism for affecting pending legislation, and many
targeted firms -- with an eye toward the perceived financial benefits
of such legislation to their bottom lines -- can easily let boycotts
roll off their backs. All too often these boycotts make the
participants feel like they're accomplishing something useful, but the
real world positive effects are minimal or nil.
The situations where consumer boycotts hold the kind of leverage
necessary to really affect these firms and other organizations in an
effective manner are relatively rare.
And it's also the case that there are usually more powerful ways to
impact the politicians who support legislation like SOPA.
Obviously most of us cannot match the big bucks donations that drive
the corruption of many politicos in these regards, but they're still
always concerned about the next election.
While this may seem surprising in the Internet age, two of the most
effective ways to affect lawmakers are through personal, physical
letters -- and direct phone calls to their main offices. These sorts
of communications, especially coming from their own constituents, are
almost inevitably tabulated and closely studied, as politicians keep
their fingers to the wind in hopes of predicting any coming electoral
storms.
Mass petitions and form letters (whether physical or online) have much
less impact, as do email communications in general. Politicians have
learned how easily all of these can be faked and gamed, and generally
discount or ignore them.
But personal, physical communications and phone calls still matter a
great deal to Congress -- and those are areas where I feel a great
deal of energy could be most usefully deployed against SOPA and PIPA.
Having said that, I still would not assert that boycotts -- in this
case of SOPA supporters -- are necessarily always useless, at least
when targeted at firms who might actually feel the impact in a
negative way affecting their bottom lines significantly.
And in this context, it's hard to think of a more "deserving"
candidate for a SOPA supporter "action" than the sleazeballs at the
"Go Daddy" domain registry.
Go Daddy is the poster child for much that is wrong with the
domain-industrial complex.
They've been in the forefront of pushing the .xxx TLD, which exists
primarily to capture expensive defensive domain registrations from
entities who have nothing to do with the adult entertainment industry,
since by and large that industry, along with free speech advocates and
anti-pornography campaigners -- all sides of the spectrum -- have
condemned the .xxx concept.
Go Daddy actively supports the "gold rush" mentality of the
"domainers" pushing the extortionist generic Top Level Domains (gTLD)
expansion nightmare, and is explicitly trying to profit through this
nightmarish protection racket -- which will only serve to suck
billions of dollars out of the weak world economy, to the enrichment
of a relative few who have turned the Domain Name System (DNS) into
their personal piggy bank.
There are other reasons to abhor Go Daddy. Their array of seamy
practices form -- to borrow from Jacob Marley in "A Christmas
Carol" -- "a ponderous chain." Go Daddy's commercials have always been
disgraceful, but that's perhaps the least of concerns given that they're
not alone in that dimension.
On the other hand, it's easy to despise Go Daddy's CEO, whose idea of
fun is going to Africa, shooting an elephant in cold blood, then
posting a bizarre and disgusting video of the results (and issuing
takedown notices for any related copies that critics attempted to
post).
But if all of this wasn't enough to make anyone with their domains
associated with Go Daddy rethink their decision, Go Daddy's strong and
enthusiastic support of SOPA should really be the last straw
( http://j.mp/vChQ7R [The Domains] ).
There do exist domain registrars who are ethical, oppose SOPA, and
don't kill animals for fun. I won't make specific recommendations
since I don't want to show favoritism toward one or another -- and I
appreciate that moving domains can sometimes be a hassle.
But if you have domains with Go Daddy -- one or a thousand of them --
I strongly urge you to transfer them to a more ethical, anti-SOPA
home.
If observers want to call that a boycott, so be it.
The future of SOPA and PIPA are impossible to clearly predict. There
are some signs that the wise protestations of the Internet engineering
community in particular have finally started to make some inroads with
SOPA-supporting politicians, who largely seem not to know the
difference between free speech and waterboarding, much less the
technical realities of keeping the wonders of the global Internet from
being diverted into a technological and political hell.
The current round of SOPA hearings in the House Judiciary Committee
have now been delayed. However, the odds -- right now -- are that
some sort of SOPA/PIPA legislation is still likely to be passed in
both chambers of Congress, and even if somewhat watered down will
still represent the censorship camel's nose under the Internet tent --
and in short order you can be sure that the entire camel will be
trampling speech with abandon.
Forces allied in favor of SOPA -- as illustrated by that list of
infamy -- are formidable indeed.
So those of use who wish to prevent the Internet from becoming a
censorship machine rather than a beacon of free speech, must be
prepared to deploy all legal means to battle SOPA. These especially
include those direct communications with lawmakers as I noted above,
but also can encompass carefully focused "mass consumer actions" as
well, including (but not necessarily limited to) the Go Daddy case.
Most of all, we do not have the luxury of wasted efforts and
squandered time.
If we blow this now, if we fail to stem the tide of what is
essentially an attempt to undermine the basic principles that make the
Internet great, it will likely be a long time -- if ever -- before an
opportunity to undo the escalating damage will emerge.
Choose your battles carefully. Choose your battles well. But choose.
And take action.
Now.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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