Internet Companies opposed to SOPA. Over 40 Internet Companies Have Come Out Publicly Against SOPA. Since the list of 120 or so SOPA supporting companies hit the Internet yesterday, the lines have been drawn; People are publicly promising to pull thousands of domains from domain registrar Godaddy after it appeared on the list as a supporter. Other people are calling those people “bullies.” Whether you’re for or against it SOPA has become somewhat of a pain point amongst techies, with the overwhelming majority, including myself and almost every other writer on the TechCrunch team, leaning heavily towards “against.” SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) essentially allows ISPs to block entire domains because a piece of hosted content infringes copyright. As the bill approaches deliberation in House of Representatives next month, a steady stream of Internet companies have taken anti-SOPA stands. After all, sacrificing innovation to save a dying business model is a close as it gets to anathema in these parts.
Here’s a list of all the publicly anti-SOPA tech/Internet companies I could find. SOPA: Google, Facebook and Twitter May Go Offline in Protest. Can you imagine a world without Google or Facebook? If plans to protest the potential passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) come to fruition, you won’t need to; those sites, along with many other well-known online destinations, will go temporarily offline as a taste of what we could expect from a post-SOPA Internet.
Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! And Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet, something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. The rumors surrounding the potential blackout were only strengthened by Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition, who told FoxNews that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week. According to Erickson, the companies are well aware of how serious an act such a blackout would be: All of this may come to nothing, of course.
Tumblr. Reddit. Google's position. Wikipedia. Facebook. Turntable.fm's Clever Anti-SOPA Protest. Cheezburger’s Ben Huh: If GoDaddy Supports SOPA, We’re Taking Our 1000+ Domains Elsewhere. And the anti-SOPA rallying of the tech world’s best continues. Just minutes after Ycombinator’s Paul Graham disclosed that SOPA-friendly companies would be blacklisted from the YC Demo Day, Cheezburger (as in I Can Has Cheeseburger, FAIL Blog, Know Your Meme, etc.)
CEO Ben Huh has announced that they will be moving their array of over 1,000 domains away from GoDaddy unless the registrar recants their support of the act. Will Huh’s threat be enough to make GoDaddy back down? Probably not: GoDaddy is a company with plenty of controversies under its belt, so they’re more than used to taking a bit of heat. With that said, it will raise awareness to the fact that taking your domains (and thus your money) elsewhere is a totally legitimate form of protest — in fact, Huh’s tweet just reminded me that I have (make that had) 2 domains sitting in GoDaddy’s yard. Thanks, Ben! Scribd Protests SOPA By Making A Billion Pages On The Web Disappear. MegaUpload. Twitter CEO and Co-Founders Speak Out Against SOPA. In what has become a day of massive Internet activism against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), the biggest names on the web are speaking out against the two proposed acts that could cause issues for sites that we use every day.
Facebook, Google join to fight Internet piracy legislation. Posted at 10:58 AM ET, 11/15/2011 Nov 15, 2011 03:58 PM EST TheWashingtonPost (TRUTH LEEM - REUTERS) Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley Internet giants put aside their competitive battles Tuesday and jointly warned federal lawmakers against anti-piracy legislation they fear could place too much responsibility on firms like them. A House legislative proposal has drawn fresh attention from Internet firms and venture capital investors who are at odds with Hollywood and record labels advocating for stronger laws. Silicon Valley giants Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn also signed onto the letter that asks leaders of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees to be more specific in any new rules to ensure online firms aren’t liable for pirated material that may appear on their sites. Online giants say they support efforts to fight against illegal exchange of copyrighted material on the Internet.
Hollywood’s trade group, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the U.S. American Censorship Day - Stand up for ████ ███████ : announcements. Protect Creativity & Innovation. Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act - Kickstarter. There is legislation currently being debated in the US Congress — the PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives — that would grant copyright owners (Hollywood, the record labels, etc) unprecedented power to shut down or block websites that host even a single piece of copyright-infringing content. This means that if, say, someone found a single instance of copyright infringement on Kickstarter, all of Kickstarter — every project — could be taken down until it's removed.
As you can imagine, this would be disastrous for everyone involved, and it would punish an entire community for the bad behavior (or honest mistake) of one person. Should it pass, SOPA would pose a real danger to sites like Kickstarter, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube under the justification of preventing copyrighted content from being illegally shared. Copyright holders are not satisfied with those rules in the face of massive industry change.