Rupert Murdoch squares off with Obama over online piracy legislation | Technology. The gathering storm over online piracy legislation being debated in the US Congress has sucked two more heavy hitters into the fray, with the Obama administration and Rupert Murdoch lining up on opposite sides of the argument. The controversy over the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) going through the House of Representatives and its Senate equivalent, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa), has intensified. Websites including Reddit and possibly Wikipedia are planning to "go dark" on Wednesday in protest at the proposals, which they say will lead to government censorship of the internet and be disastrous for innovation.
On Saturday, the Obama administration made clear that it would not tolerate several of the more controversial aspects of the two bills, particularly the power to interfere with the architecture of the web by tampering with its Domain Name System (DNS). The White House statement was not a simple denunciation of Sopa and Pipa. Video game industry still supports anti-piracy bill. By Stephen C. WebsterSaturday, December 31, 2011 9:43 EDT Despite a flurry of reports suggesting that the world’s largest video game companies have dropped their support for the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — a bill which critics say could break the fundamental structure of the Internet in the U.S. — that assumption appears premature. The Internet was set aflutter the day before New Year’s Eve after Business Insider noticed that Nintendo, Electronic Arts (EA) and Sony Electronics had removed themselves from a list of official SOPA supporters (PDF) curated by the House Judiciary Committee.
The disappearance of these influential corporations sparked a wave of reports that the largest video game makers in the world had dropped their support for the bill. Those reports, however, are not correct. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the gaming industry’s lobby, still officially support SOPA. The ESA, on the other hand, remains committed to the bill. Stephen C. Paul Graham: SOPA Supporting Companies No Longer Allowed At YC Demo Day. At this point quite a few internet companies have protested H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in creative ways. Held by many to be the worst thing to ever happen to the Internet if it passes, SOPA would makes it really easy for copyright holders to force sites offline that they think are offending, among other things.
While the judiciary vote has been delayed until next year, the list revealing the companies who support the act was released yesterday, and many startups, such as Reddit, have begun to drill down into boycotts of individual companies like domain provider GoDaddy. The company boycotts have sparked a thread on Hacker News, where user Solipsist posted a link to the list with the comment, “While I understand your sentiments towards SOPA, are you really going to distance yourself from all of these companies?” To which YCombinator founder and investor Paul Graham replied, “Actually that’s exactly what I thought when I saw the list yesterday. The rationale? Go Daddy Publishes SOPA Position, Turns Off Comments. 23 December '11, 01:28am Follow The Internet is collectively raging at domain seller Go Daddy for supporting the “Stop Online Piracy Act“, with people like Ben Huh threatening to pull away 1,000 domains owned by his company Cheezburger.
In response, Go Daddy has published a blog post that is as useful as a pile of day-old dogshit. Many of our customers have asked us about our position on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Below are statements from Go Daddy Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Christine Jones. We’ve made them available here on our blog so all our customers can read our position. Basically, all Go Daddy has done is copy and paste the statements it submitted to the House of Representatives about SOPA on October 28th and November 15th of this year.
The real kicker is that Go Daddy doesn’t want to hear what you, its customer, thinks. There you have it folks, this is the type of Internet that Go Daddy supports. A Step-by-Step Guide to Transfer Domains Out Of GoDaddy. Follow these step-by-step directions to transfer all of your domains from GoDaddy to NameCheap.
I’m Boycotting GoDaddy because they are pro-SOPA. [edit: apparently GoDaddy changed their stance according to TechCrunch] Step 1: Login to GoDaddy and get to the domain manager. Step 2: Select all domains Step 3: Click on the “Locking Icon” Step 4: Uncheck “lock domains” Step 5: Find the tools tab —> “exportable lists” Step 6: Click on “Add New Export” button Step 7: Select “All My Domains” as the list type Step 8: Check the “Authorization codes” box Step 9: Generate the Exportable List Step 10: Create account at another provider I chose NameCheap (affiliate link).
EDIT: NameCheap is Against SOPA, here is their official stance. People have also sent promo codes: “switch2nc" and "SOPAsucks" - try them too. Step 11: Go to “transfer domain” Step 12: Enter domains you wish to transfer & click “transfer” **EDIT: You can simply add the domain, Auth code in Step 12 above** ex: myURL.com, authorizationcode Boom! GoDaddy no longer supports SOPA.
3M takes SOPA REALLY seriously. All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law and How to Contact Them. 29 Tech Companies Back SOPA. Update: The Business Software Alliance has ‘reconsidered’ its backing of SOPA in its current form and now says that it “needs work”. After writing a rather lengthy and somewhat firey post on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) yesterday, I realized this morning that I didn’t know Microsoft’s position on the matter.
As I edit our Microsoft channel, I immediately sent off a query to the company concerning the Act. To my surprise it took some time to hear back, and when I did get word the response was ‘no comment.’ Obviously intrigued, I dug into the issue. As it turns out, ‘no comment’ is Microsoft’s official position on SOPA. But Microsoft did support the pre-SOPA Protect IP Act, something that SOPA did draw on heavily for its roots. We can, however, show that it does. Yeah, how about that. The following list is every single member of the Business Software Alliance. To learn more about SOPA, and why you should be afraid of it, head here. Nintendo, EA, Sony sponsor Internet censorship bill.