I wrote this because I was questioned about the relative impact of changing a twitter icon to say STOP SOPA.

Why would anyone want to change their icon to support something they believe in? It is perhaps as fundamental a question as “Why does someone blog?” or “Why does someone use social media?”

Symbols can be just as much of a hueristic or a call to action as the written word. If you have the ability to create a question, let a follower know where you stand, aren’t you saying something? Aren’t you taking a stand yourself - even to a sympathetic audience. Brands count on them. Ask Coca-Cola or McDonalds!

I was questioned by both @ChrisBrogan and @JustinMWhitaker about this very notion.

To say that a visual doesn’t say as much or have as much impact as the written word is a silly assumption. It might be the incentive to to read, to find out more, to remember.

To assume that all of your followers are sympathetic is also very possibly a silly notion. (Personally, I hope I have as many people that may disagree with me follow me as those that agree - I’m happy to have people think - regardless of which side of the fence they fall to.)

Telling your followers that you support something can also serve as a call to action themselves. Perhaps it may even incent them to do something more. Think about it more, reason it out, and perhaps become more actively involved.

Isn’t that one of the foundations of social media? To incent a reader to action? 

Isn’t that why there are millions of share icons all over the web? What’s the difference?

[EDIT] @Chrisbrogan read this post and did change his icon. Thanks Chris!  I have asked several other Social Media Marketing experts including Chris Pirillo and many of them have. Still waiting on you Chris!!!

GoDaddy was a SOPA supporter and then thousands of tweets, blog posts, and domain migrations later, GoDaddy changed their postion to being against SOPA’s present wording/form. Given the situation, they responded as well as can be expected.

People are quick to pile on.  I admit I’m one of the “pilers.” If I have a connection, my typical post is “Say it ain’t so”. A former co-worker is a sysadmin there. If I’m outraged, I’ll describe my feelings. I wasn’t outraged - but I was surprised.

What happened next was laudible and characteristic of a well-managed company that goes “HOLY CRAP, WE BETTER ENGAGE”.  They did.  I got a few calls - from GoDaddy management as well as sales.  

I have more than a few domains and sites (and less than many of the larger companies) that are parked or hosted at GoDaddy. Someone called me out publicly and asked why I was still using them. I said that there is no one click solution to moving business from one provider to another. Some claim it but it is time consuming and resource intensive. Move them in January? I don’t think so!

When someone from sales called, they had just completed an account review and noticed that they could save me about $500 / year by changing hosting plans.  When someone from their management team called me, they listened and promised they would continue to listen.

Management acknowledged continued feedback about their management interfaces. I stated they were overloaded with marketing messages when I was already a customer. Visual pollution is what I think I said. They acknowledged my statement as consistent feedback from other customers. They gave me email contacts and stated that they would be monitoring them.

As I have said before, I am hopeful they continue to listen.

I think everyone expected something miraculous to come as the result of the overwhelming negative response in public forums; however, they are professionally run (now) and I believe they will turn the page and do everything they can to put this experience to use as a lesson and in the past as a _really_bad_experience. 

(I have not been paid nor am I a direct owner of any shares of GoDaddy-related companies.)

Here’s what I know so far:

• Rights holders have legitimate concerns. They do lose lots of money to pirating. Here’s a good presentation by @FastGirlFilms (I think it is slanted against advertisers but if you look at their losses and their efforts to leverage DMCA, they have a point.)
• The content creator/delivery/blogger/search/payment ecosystem has lots to lose too by getting filtered without adequate due process or redress. Most notably, Google and PayPal have legitimate concerns as to the cost and overhead with fighting piracy. Content delivery networks - including Facebook also have concerns over the same issues.
• Technologists state that it is impossible to stop piracy. I agree. Sites can go up and down overnight and pirates will get paid one way or another. As soon as you know the address of an offending site and report it, it’s likely to be smoke.
• Internet filtering is censorship. Plain and simple. It’s a slippery slope that affects everyone’s rights from the content creators to content consumers.
• The DMCA was created to combat piracy. Piracy remains a problem and the sheer volume of DMCA notices indicates that DMCA is an unwieldy issue for any party.
• Our government is stretched and there are a number of issues that should take priority over addressing this issue.

So what is it going to take? Who is going to budge?

A possible solution:

That both the proponents of SOPA and PIPA, the content delivery/advertising networks above, and our representatives haven’t sat down at the table and hashed out a solution that works. Does it require a law? No. It requires a concerted effort by all parties to take reasonable efforts to combat the issue. Everyone involved in the entire supply chain is responsible; yet no one is doing their part.

Perhaps it does require the government to push this forward - but does it require a law?

No, just leadership and participation by everyone in the process.

More later….

If you’re at all plugged in to the ‘net, the LulzSec (Anonymous) group has been extremely busy lately. They promise to be more active on January 3rd.

This post is not commentary about the legitimacy of their actions save one thing:

The hackers prove that laws won’t stop piracy or hacking. If something is out there, it is likely to be hacked. Why? It’s a challenge for a developer to break something, to develop a build a different representation of it. It’s a mountain to be climbed. A coder is going to do it elegantly or by brute force. For some, it doesn’t matter.

There are many examples of hacking (we used to call it phrackin’) from banks all the way down to, in a way, Makers. Those geeky little guys in their basement taking apart a Roomba or even me, trying to figure out the minimum number of lines of Objective C with the tiniest memory footprint to do a parallax as a gift to a friend (you know who you are..)

Anyway, with respect to SOPA/PIPA and all of the other paranoiac silliness out there, it’s a waste. Creating additional measures to fight Piracy is redundant and pointless. Pirates are out there and they always will be. People wanting to make a quick buck from a pirated movie? A pirated track? They’ll always be there.

Anonymous/LulzSec proves that. They’re going to do what they do (most hackers have a mission and vision, and like anyone else, their idea of reality and values) and like IP pirates, only a tiny fraction of them get prosecuted.

The real question is: Knowing this, what is the point of SOPA and PIPA? The potential threat to personal liberties and the first amendment is too great for these to be written into law. Someone is going to get hurt by it. One person getting hurt is one too many.

Now, with NDAA, one person getting disappeared is one to many. 

A nightmare scenario:

A pirate is deemed a hacker because that’s how they got their links around DNSSEC. They doing so, they can be deemed a threat to national security. They get disappeared when they were only scamming on CDs and DVDs. Poof. For some, I would expect to say that the punishment fits the crime. I don’t think so…

The coming weeks are going to be interesting. I know one thing. I’ll make every effort I can not to consume SOPA supporter media. I’d like to suggest you do the same.

Leave Our Rock Alone.

A few things that are alarming beyond comparison striking about the SOPA bill. Of course, this is saying that it’s needed - that it’s not redundant to existing law, that existing law (DCMA) doesn’t do anything.

Here are a few things that get me - beyond the fact that both SOPA and PIPA are not needed - in fact they make things worse for common folk…

Misbranding and Adulteration leverages existing FDA Guidelines instead of existing copyright law (DMCA)

Misleading Language: The Senate Bill leverages misbranding and adulteration language from FDA regulations (Sec 21 U.S.C. 352) instead of from prior copyright language. Obviously, the FDA language has more teeth and with good reason. You don’t want to consume any drugs which are adulterated version of the real thing or mislabeled. I suppose you don’t want to watch a mislabeled movie either; however, aren’t we talking about IP here? What about previous language relating to IP - already in law? What about the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) for example.

The Senate bill creates collusion between the Attorney General and IP Holders:

Sec 7, 2: The Attorney General provide guidance to intellectual property rights holders about how to supplement an ongoing investigation initiated pursuant to this Act.

It’s typical for law enforcement to work with victims - but it is generally not legislated to this extent.

If you’re a linker, you might be a stinker.

Both PIPA and SOPA have provisions for organizations that provide links. You can be directed to remove them - after you have been given notice to do so. Unfortunately, if you are part of a supply chain of linkers (a situation out of your control, let’s say an Ad-Serving network), your payments can be suspended until the offending parties have provided some form of redress (removing the offending links, shutting down a site, etc.)  Care to take a gamble on your next commission check?

Which Plaintiffs Get Priority?

Sec 7, 3: The Attorney General shall provide establish standards for prioritization of actions brought under this Act.

Again, this is typical; however, what does this really mean? Who gets first dibs on a strained government authority? What about defendant priorities? Probably not a factor to them.

Now, when you combine SOPA (from the House) and PIPA (from the Senate), you get:

• A lack of due process for defendants and priority given to rights holders. Those priorities might be for certain types of media but we don’t know because the law doesn’t address it.
• Linkers might be stinkers - or you might be painted with the same brush if you’re in the link supply chain to an offending party (or a suspected offending party.)
• A tool to block accused pirates (DNSSEC changes).
• An absolutely no specific wording on redress or due process.

Ultimately, the accused put their fates in the hands of the Attorney General.  They’ll determine who gets blocked, how long they’re blocked, what the damages are, when sites might get released, what constitutes pirating (copying, adulteration, and/or mislabeling).  BTW, they will also have the power to tie up the payment systems of the accused.

Go ahead, link away!  Watch television this week, buy or rent all the movies you can, giving SOPA supporters the right kind of war chest to get these bills passed.

OR:

Stop renting and watching SOPA-suporter media (sorry, that includes Disney), television, some books, etc. Change your habits for a week so that they don’t get changed for you!

#STOPSOPAWEEK - January 1 - 7.

An excellent substitute term: Get closer to your kids week.

Let’s start 2012 off right!

71 of our representatives and many content providers and distributors want to add mechanisms that can ultimately restrict your voice and your freedoms.  Stop SOPA Week is about telling Washington that for this one time, doing nothing is the absolutely right thing to do.

I’ve been vocal and so have many others. Over the last week, I’ve observed the best and the worst in behaviors with respect to SOPA and it’s proponents. What happened?

People spoke with their pocket books. Many site owners spent time and money to move away from GoDaddy to demonstrate they disagreed with GoDaddy’s point of view. Hackers called for a massive strike. People are flooding petition sites with submissions and phones with calls.

The result? GoDaddy changed their stance. I’m relieved they did. They listened and I trust they’ll continue to listen and seek more feedback.  Sure, they might have learned a valuable lesson but I also think they’ll get something else: They’ll get closer to their customer and remember to listen to them, if not ask actively ask them for feedback.

What happened to GoDaddy can happen to other companies that still support these unnecessary laws.

In calling attention to a problem, I don’t (do not) believe our “representatives should be crushed”, sites should be hacked, or anything destructive.

Instead, let’s call both SOPA and PIPA efforts what they are: Commercial organizations are attempting to redefine our freedom to protect interests. They suggest that the creation of enforcement mechanisms will solve their problems. That the law can change the behaviors of a small set of the population that seem to think it’s ok to break the law.

Do I think that what happened to GoDaddy is enough for SOPA/PIPA supporters to reconsider their proposal? No. Many of them are larger and have deeper pocket books. 

I believe that SOPA/PIPA supporters should be boycotted. Nothing else. Simply ask people not to consume. It’s easier than migrating a domain and it doesn’t cost anything! It doesn’t bring the FBI to your door.

To me, the benefits are obvious: For not renting or watching a video for a week, for not watching reruns in front of the television for a week, you also say the following:

First Amendment Rights trump any commercial interest.

For spending more time with your family or exploring lesser known media types and content, you get something else:

Knowing that this one time on this one single issue, that doing nothing in Washington is the right thing to do.

Seems like a bargain to me!

I’ve tweeted and blogged about this all week. I’ve contacted over 100 people about it and some have responded including Brad Feld, some members of the TechStars community and other notable techs.

Here’s why I’m against it and why you might consider being against it too:

1) HR 3261 gives our government the ability to restrict which sites do business based on a simple complaint by a company or individual who feels they’ve been wronged. (A decent FAQ here.)

Other countries that don’t have their roots in democracy or free speech use the same restrictions proposed in SOPA to prohibit free speech and dissenting opinions.

2) Free speech is at the absolute core of our ability to live in a free and democratic country. No matter what’s wrong right now - and there’s plenty that is wrong, we have the ability to speak up. That’s exactly what I’m doing right now - without any restriction.

I define my free speech as the ability to communicate any way and any how. What the bill will do is quite possibly create an intermediate step between me and anyone else - perhaps even a governmental authority. Do you want that? Perhaps for terrorists, yes - but there are already measures in place for that.  For anything though?  I think not.

3) My third point - why I am taking time away from my family and my work - to actively campaign against HR 3261. It’s not that I don’t like movies or books or take secret delight that GoDaddy underestimated their customer base and their needs.

What strikes me most about HR 3261 is that its supporters are willing to throw away their same freedoms and propose that the government control the internet - the thing that’s given them new business life (through its efficiencies and throughput) and a new commercial front. Had they not adopted internet technology, many of them would not be in business today.  Those same companies are supporting this bill - without considering the truly deleterious effects that this bill will create.

Most of the bill’s strongest supporters (here)have not been able to come together as an industry to develop or support an existing technology and standardize to protect themselves - without changing your freedoms or mine. They’ve been trying for years. They’ve had years to plan and agree and yet, it is cheaper and more effective for them to simply support the creation of a law - a law that you and I will ultimately suffer from.

Don’t forget that they stand to lose a significant amount of money from piracy; however, the funny thing about it is that they’re primarily distributors and not original content creators. Quite certainly content creators need them (the entire ecosystem including producers, editors, sound people, actors, etc); however, they’re just one part of the supply chain.  

They have not adapted. They’re not agile. They simply have three things: an inordinate amount of cash (which translates to clout), the ability to influence you, and the ability to mute this message about my freedoms and yours.

Instead, they intend on fundamentally changing the internet - through legislation - simply because they have been ineffective themselves.

Again, It is our freedom that I’m concerned about: We have the freedom to say that this bill stinks.  Unfortunately, due to their ability to mute this conversation and not make it a news item - they have already accomplished their job - they have controlled the media and the message. Hell, they are the media so let’s just say, at times our freedom has a big muzzle on it.

To fight this bill, I ask for you to consider to not consume any SOPA supporter media for the week of January 1 through January 7. Share this in FB, twitter and let’s get people informed about the bill’s massive ramifications.

(Note: I understand what I’m asking. I’m asking you to change your habits. The benefits? We keep our freedom and you get even more free (or freedom) - by looking beyond consumer media to some really great stuff out there!)

Note: At the time I wrote this, there were only 1,300 hits on the link to a list of it’s supporters. There is an active Reddit discusion here.  Reddit’s FAQ is here.