The Cost of Doing Business
Published December 29th, 2011 | 
Even Danica Patrick in a bikini couldn’t help GoDaddy.com when the famous Internet company thought it was a good idea to support SOPA. Thousands of GoDaddy clients banded together to show the domain registrar exactly who’s wearing the man boots and who’s wearing womens boots by organizing a boycott. In a span of a few days, GoDaddy lost over 20,000 accounts when the disgruntled protesters transferred their domains to other registrars. GoDaddy blinked and withdrew its support for the Stop Online Piracy Act. It goes to prove that if you want to change minds don’t waste your time with marches and impassioned pleas to politicians who couldn’t possibly give a fuck about your interest. No . . . you want change, then cost the motherfuckers lots of money. Make’em bleed cash. See how fast they cave.
SOPA Will Break the Internet, But Will Not Stop Online Piracy
Published December 20th, 2011 | If the supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act believe there piece of crap bill will actually stop intellectual property theft, I’ve got some motorhome insurance to sell ya. Seriously, Online pirates will adapt if this bill becomes law. What will happen is a gross violation of our constitutional rights, a violation that will essentially break the Internet.
Although, intended to block sites dedicated to distributing Pirated material (sites like Piratebay.org and MegaUpload, et. al.), what the bill mostly does is promote censorship and violate our privacy rights. The problem of online piracy has been grossly exaggerated by the entities that support this bill and, to the extent that it is a problem at all, those same entities have created the problem by there own draconian efforts to extend copyright, control access to intellectual property and fix prices. It’s short sighted. Those who download from pirate sites generally fall into two groups: those who weren’t going to buy the product in the first place and those who want to try something out to see if they like it before they buy it. As such, the real loss of income from these illegal downloads is really minimal when you think about it logically. Take a kid who downloads a Jay-Z song illegally. Maybe he was never going to pay for the song. Maybe he eventually pays for the whole album. And maybe he buys a concert ticket or several concert tickets. The government already has the tools to go after pirates and counterfeiters. We don’t need this oppressive bill that will only violate our rights. This is Chinese democracy, folks! Keep the Internet free of government control.
They Did a Bad, Bad Thing
Published December 20th, 2011 | A while back, I said that even though I was firmly against the “agency model” for pricing e-books, I did not believe that Apple colluded with publishers. Well… as the lawsuit against Apple and the mainstream publishers moves forward, information has come to light to make me rethink my initial conclusion. If we roll up our sleeves, put on a pair of tillman gloves and get to work investigating the matter further, we find that it was an unnamed publishing insider who tipped Grant & Eisenhofer, a law firm hoping to represent consumers in the matter, to the conspiracy. They could be blowing smoke. The “publishing insider” could be full of shit. However, If there is indeed actual proof that there was collusion, perhaps we can finally put an end to the agency model.
