

Why Aren't Other SOPA Supporters Being Punished Like GoDaddy? - flueedo
https://www.pcworld.com/article/247037/why_arent_other_sopa_supporters_being_punished_like_godaddy.html

======
sunchild
GoDaddy felt the brunt of direct action because:

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.

~~~
anrope
Pretty spot on.

GoDaddy already has a bad reputation, and they're way easier to stop using
than, say, the NFL or ESPN (for most people).

Also, GoDaddy is an internet company, supporting internet oppression. It's
kind of like they're trying to throw their own family under the bus.

~~~
htsh
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"

------
pg
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.

~~~
htsh
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.

~~~
DanLivesHere
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.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-
fi...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111223/09051617180/law-firms-
removing-their-name-sopa-supporters-list-sopa-support-crumbling.shtml)

~~~
htsh
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.

~~~
chc
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.

~~~
wtallis
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.

~~~
htsh
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.

------
gwillen
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.

------
cheald
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.

------
longtimelrk3r
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.

------
city41
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.

~~~
derwiki
A domain name registrar is a more directly replaceable good. Switching form
one video game to another is switching to a brand new product.

~~~
absconditus
Yes, and playing video games is more important than our principles.

------
saalweachter
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.

~~~
njs12345
Nike products are presumably counterfeited, the prevention of which being one
of SOPA's stated aims.

~~~
saalweachter
Ah-ha, for some reason I hadn't thought of actual fake real objects. That
explains most of the companies on the list.

Do people buy fake Fords?

~~~
daeken
There probably aren't complete knockoff Ford cars, but there certainly are
counterfeit parts.

------
scootklein
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.

~~~
mikeash
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.

~~~
Natsu
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'.

~~~
mikeash
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.

------
JulianMorrison
Because it's hard, I expect. There are few companies you can boycott with just
a few clicks.

~~~
thomasgerbe
Pretty much.

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.

------
vaksel
because GoDaddy's product was a commodity, there is absolutely nothing that
differentiated it from the rest.

Meanwhile other companies offer unique products(or at least those that differ
from their competitors)...so it's harder to give up things like that.

\+ it's an internet company, so knee capping them will take off valuable
support

------
pbreit
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.

------
wccrawford
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!

~~~
x3c
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.

~~~
dspeyer
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.

~~~
antihero
"Microsoft...the least evil"

How times have changed, eh.

------
miles_matthias
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.

------
Kadrith
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.

------
ORioN63
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!

------
xtal
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.

~~~
city41
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.

------
cdk
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.

------
surrealize
For me, it had a lot to do with how obnoxious their posts in support of SOPA
were.

------
waldr
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!

------
mariuolo
Because of Bob Parsons' peculiar arrogance.

------
drivebyacct2
Because GoDaddy lobbied for it with money, helped write it, and is exempted
from it.

------
wedtm
Nice try, Godaddy.

