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.
I am the internet: Stop SOPA
tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?
Whoa! I own a planet? News to me!
So everyone got a single service provider, GoDaddy to change their position. Why stop there? I believe we can make a bigger dent.
What if you didn’t watch television (new or reruns), watch, rent, or buy a movie, download or buy a song or CD for just one week? And perhaps you don’t buy a book as well?
Stop Consuming SOPA Supporter Media. Just for one week. January 1 through January 7.
Let’s just say we limit it to:
ABC, CBS, NBC, Warner Brothers, BMI, Capitol Records, Disney, ESPN, Harper Collins, Lost Runway Records, MacMillan, MCA, McGraw Hill, Random House, Scholastic, Sony, Perseus, Time Warner (and not watch cable too!), Universal, Viacom, or religious media from Word Entertainment.
If they’re concerned about piracy, I wonder how concerned they would be if people simply stopped consuming their media?
Please engage and let’s get this fixed. I believe artists who wish to protect their content should be allowed to protect it - but let’s do this the right way - without changing the internet.
It occurred to me that there are more than a few ways to fight SOPA. Here are a few:
1. Write Your Representatives
2. Boycott anyone on this list
List of SOPA Supporters as recorded by the House Judiciary Committee
3. Sign an electronic petition.
About Boycotting and Activism
Boycotting the folks above includes not donating to their causes, not buying their goods and services, speaking to those around you who might use their goods and services, and directly contacting their places of business. There are a number of entertainment businesses on this list. Remember that your boycotting activities would include the entire food chain - all of their suppliers, their customers, etc. It might be your friends and neighbors who are part of it.
Many of these organizations are publicly held; therefore, you can go to Yahoo Finance and look up their officers and boards of directors. If you want to make an impact, write them. Their contact information is there too!
Things you might notice: If you’re a startup, many Venture Capital firms have not voiced their concerns over SOPA. Why? Perhaps some of their portfolio companies in the entertainment supply chain.
This took me ten minutes to write. Can you imagine if everyone spent ten minutes to try to stop SOPA?
I think I’m running synchronously with Brad Feld & Mark Suster these days. Brad posted Mark’s post about direct feedback and what amounts to no feedback at all. In the last 24 hours, the lack of serious feedback hosed me and my productivity.
If you look at my linkedin profile, there’s a recommendation by Gregg Hogan saying I can be blunt - and that’s a good thing. I believe it. You do want brutally honest when you asked right? Why ask otherwise? Taking and acting on feedback is your decision.
What I’m most concerned with is getting any feedback at all and if I do get it, that it’s thorough. Why? Any feedback is a good thing but thorough feedback is critical - from friends, from peers, from customers (existing and potential).
Unfortunately, people don’t have time - even when you return the favor - time and time again.
Feedback counts. Immersing yourself as the user and giving unvarnished feedback is even more important.
Let me give you an example: I’m working on a Mapping Kit for both iPhone and Android. There are three large components - the database and the two mobile clients.
Here’s what happened: I have some buttons that represent location types. Pressing on them drops map pins based on those location types. I have two customers that are testing the app now and those buttons work! Great!
Here’s what was missing: A button to show all of the locations!!! Damn! Easy to fix - but time consuming in the fact that I have to go back into the code, find what I did (a couple thousand lines of code on two platforms) and add the buttons, the graphics, etc.
Both customers missed it! Two friends missed it. Two contractors missed it. I missed it. Who was not being thorough? Who didn’t look critically? Being immersed also means being inured - like looking through the forest at the trees. The friends? The customers? Who knows.
The next time you are asked for feedback, embrace the fact that someone cares enough to ask and will truly value it. Dig in. Good or bad, the person who asked will love you for it…or they weren’t prepared to deal with it in the first place….
For more on feedback:
Developers understand what code hell is. I had to define it to a layman…
Laymen’s explanation of some of the challenges behind it: When software crashes, developers are penalized in three different ways: the crash itself and the realization that it’s likely you didn’t do something well, the time to find the bug, possibly the worst part: the reports you get back that point to the error never make it easy to actually find the error.
So, while you might be frustrated with the software, believe me, the developer has already felt your pain and then some….
How could papa not know? Working overtime on Christmas eve. Mama all by herself eating cookies with the Milk Man. One thing leading to another. Timmy was tired of donning the antlers Mama made for him. Enough was enough.
After almost two years of coding on each platform, I have to say Android has less overhead. I believe that iOS has a richer SDK; however, line by line, element by element, it’s Android hands down.
Now, if the Android Market could overtake the App Store, I’d be a happy man and only dev on one platform.
It took me a while to actually make that conclusion. I’m in the middle of a few larger projects and last night, I started counting “class files”….the iPad app I’m working on right now has 80*…geesh.
*not including toolkits (TouchXML, ASIHttpRequest, JSONKit, MBProgressHud, Reachability, ShareKit)
