The Companies Who Support Censoring the Internet 299
RichiH writes "From Techdirt: 'A group of companies sent a letter to to Attorney General Eric Holder and ICE boss John Morton (with cc's to VP Joe Biden, Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, IP Czar Victoria Espinel, Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. John Conyers, Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley), supporting the continued seizure of domain names they don't like, as well as the new COICA censorship bill, despite the serious Constitutional questions raised about how such seizures violate due process and free speech principles.' A full list of companies who you might want to avoid buying from is included, as well."
Re:Xerox? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kudos for picking that one out. I notice that there's very little tech in this list. In fact, the overly large representation from sports-related companies has me wondering what's up with them. I know counterfeit sports apparel is a bit of a pain for them, but I didn't know that it was that bad.
Maybe Xerox is looking at finally taking on Apple and Microsoft over that whole GUI thing?
Re:Wall Street rules (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah. Awesome - I'll just make sure that I move out of Oregon so that I'm in on way supporting Nike, Adidas, or Columbia Sportswear (WTF?) through state business breaks of any kind. And discontinue my access to the internet, so I'm not supporting those companies And then I'll be sure not to watch a significant chunk of movies, from the film companies below. Or video games, since about 50% of games seem to come from Activision.
The thing is, I understand the concerns of these companies. I understand that they want to be able to attack forgeries piracy, wherever they may originate (and note, by "piracy", I mean the guys who make and sell copies of digital and other content and sell it for a profit as their own; not some kid in his basement playing an illegitimate copy of a game that he downloaded).
I just don't understand why so many are entertaining the idea - neigh, supporting it - of violating so many rights in such clear and offensive ways. Why not support bringing lawsuits against people who run domains like "CheapNikeKnockoffsRightHere.com" and then sell forgeries for a tenth the cost of the real thing rather than supporting yanking their domains without due process? In fact, yanking the domains should be a lengthy formal process; not a whim.
Also . . . ICE? Immigration? WTF?
Also . . . isn't it great that DHS/Homeland Security is now involved in EVERYTHING? The fate of the entire country is at stake! Code orange must now be raised to terrorism code red, because this guy has a dozen fake Rolexes! Oh noes!
Oh well. I still have netflix, starbucks, minivans, teh baby jebus, and nascar -- and as an American, that's all I need to be content and shut my mouth and look the other way.
Re:Xerox? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's worth noting that while Nike supports stronger anti-counterfeiting laws (natch), they wrote Senator Wyden asking him not to break the internet. [techdirt.com] From the letter:
"The Internet is too important to our economy and to advancing American values to be inappropriately regulated and censored under the guise of protecting IP"
Add: National Association of Realtors (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The list (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you sure about that?
Viacom == CBS, Comedy Central (Colbert/Daily Show), BET, The CW, MTV, Showtime, many radio stations, last.cm, CNET, download.com, gameFAQs, GameSpot, Metacritic, techrepublic, tv.com, ZDNet, Simon & Schuster, Westinghouse, etc.
NBC Universal == General Electric, Comcast, NBC, USA network, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, Weather Channel, AT&T, Hulu, Vivendi, MCA, SyFy, Universal Music, Biography channel, National Geographic channel, A&E, Tivo, many radio/tv stations, etc.
Not to mention the many other subsidiaries of the companies and branches listed above. And that's just two companies. Chances are good that you'll buy something (or many things) in the next year that benefit Nike or Adidas or Activision, but are under brands and subsidiaries that we aren't familiar with.
It is extremely difficult to actually boycott a corporation these days. Hell, if you decided to boycott Proctor & Gamble, you'd probably never be able to buy a single thing for the rest of your life.
Re:Xerox? (Score:2, Interesting)
Amazon is already on my list for banning Wikileaks. Much more significant than what ICE does.
I personally believe that a war on counterfeit, branded items should be a higher priority (see all counterfeit CISCO gear). Nothing to do with censorship here. But if you sell CISCO gear, it is suppose to be from CISCO not from some Chinese knockoff. The reasons are plain and simple,
1. the company bears the blunt of complaints - if counterfeit stuff is broken, then the company image suffers, not the knockoff creator's
2. customers pay thieves for products that have no warranty, no backing of any kind.
3. counterfeit products may result in injury or worse - see counterfeit toothpaste laced with antifreeze that killed dozens of people, or the melamine milk in China
This is what ICE is *suppose* to do. They are suppose to confiscate counterfeit goods and work to shut down these operations.
What ICE should NOT be doing is censoring the internet! Copied bits are not counterfeit goods, unless someone is selling them as the originals.
Re:D'Addario (Score:5, Interesting)
Nike can jam it, AFAIC, but if you read the comments attached to TFA you might have seen this comment from Jim D'Addario [techdirt.com]...
Jim D'Addario, Jan 19th, 2011 @ 6:10am
You really should visit and talk to some companies that are living this experience. There is no way to file a legal law suit in every instance someone is stealing my D'Addario Strings trademark. We are family owned business in the USA with sales of $150 million. Sounds big, and rich and all that!!! However last year we spent $750,000 on legal battles and got nowhere. We would be bankrupt trying to protect the 1000 jobs that we provide here in the USA. We are not General Motors, IBM or NIke. The scale is not there.
If we were allowed legitimate access to the Chinese market and the Chinese were not counterfeiting our product we would be able to create 200 to 500 more jobs in the USA.
Don't paint everyone with a broad stroke of the brush. Telling the companies on the list to work harder is an insult. We work as hard as we possibly can already (its 5:30 AM where i am right now and dont stop working until 6:30 PM.
I have personally visited stores in four Chinese cities to see 7 out of 10 sets of my brand of strings are fake. The packaging is perfect, right down to the American flat and the words "Printed and Made in USA". The strings are shxt.
I wonder how that would make you feel if you started a brand name from nothing in 1974 and built it to the largest in the world only to watch people completely rip it off.
So your suggestioin to me is to work harder and sue everyone? I may as well close up or cash out and watch the 1000 jobs evaporate. Or better, maybe i should move the factory to China and destroy another 1000 US jobs?
Go on Alibaba.com and witness the hundreds of thousands of fake product listings. There is nothing on the site that is real or legitimate. At some point the government has to take some kind of police action. This is not just a civil matter, there are criminal (grand larceny) implications here.
I agree there should be due process before a site is shut down. I dont know what that process should be, but when threre is clear evidence submitted to a government agency that a site is selling fake merchandise the government should have some authority to put a URL on hold until they can defend themselves. Let the theives absorb the burden of defending themselves, don't expect the legitimate folks to foot the bill.
How is possible for the public to ask the legitimate manufacturers to bear the role of the government and police every instance of fraud with a law suit? It would be tens of millions of $$$ a year.
Learn more before developing such strong views and 'black listing' good people.
Jim D'Addario - CEO D'Addario and Company
Re:The list (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, boycotts are mostly unworkable.
Don't merely deny yourself to deny them. Take your business to the competition. A problem with that is, sometimes there isn't any competition. Lack of competition, and the ongoing efforts to eliminate competition, are the biggest problems capitalism faces.
Lawsuits and court cases are a lot of effort, and may fail. And are reactionary besides. Go on the offensive. Proposing alternative laws may be better. How about a constitutional amendment? A "Free Sharing" amendment, sort of like Free Speech. If it gained traction, would solve a lot of these issues. They'd be scared silly by the prospect of such an amendment actually becoming law. It would shift the debate, and they'd be too busy fighting to hang on to their intellectual monopolies to have the energy to keep up this continual testing of the waters to see how much censorship they can get away with.
Re:Wall Street rules (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a big part of the problem is that actual systemic change isn't the sort of thing that happens without casualties. Every time in history that a society has attempted to redesign itself all at once, on the level that most internet-dwelling political savants want, it has led to either a civil war or mass starvation.
Change isn't free.
Re:Add: National Association of Realtors (Score:4, Interesting)
LIEberalS (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Wall Street rules (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a little late for hope. I know mine's completely gone. I was disgusted by the letter from the companies to the government. It was full of lies and half truths. Some choice snippets that particularly galled me:
We run companies large and small that represent diverse aspects of America's intellectual property community.
There is no "intellectual property community", there are various and diverse artists, inventors, and technologists who have nothing to do with each other.
While our employees live in different regions of the country, and work to produce a variety of goods and services, they have several important things in common - they work hard, they are committed to quality and innovation and they welcome competition.
Jesus H. Christ, what unmitigated bullshit! The RIAA is after file sharers not because they're losing money to pirates (studies show that pirates spend more on music than non-pirates), it's a blow agaisnt the indie artists who can't get radio airplay and depend on P2P. The indies are the RIAA's competetion. I don't know what's more unbelievable, that these sociopathic parasites spew this nonsense, or that people are actually stupid enough to believe it.
However, allowing others to unfairly compete by stealing the ideas, innovations and intellectual property rights created by our employees cannot be tolerated. This theft diminishes our ability to keep and create jobs, and makes it far more difficult to attract the capital needed to invest in new products and services.
Theft isn't rape, and copyright infringement isn't theft. This intellectual "property" they speak of does NOT belong to them any more than a renter owns his house. Like the renter, the IP moguls have a limited time monopoly, not ownership. The IP belongs to we, the people. And BTW, the extreme copyright lengths are stifling creativity, and software patents stifle innovation. Imagine how innovation would suffer if patents lasted as long a copyrights? And a software patent is like granting a patent to Disney for the idea of a cartoon mouse or duck.
In order to protect our free enterprise system, and the standard of living it has contributed to our nation, it is critical that we multiply our efforts to identify and punish the criminals who steal what we create and produce.
Our standard of living has been dropping for a couple of generations, unless you're one of the top 10% of earners. And there's that bald faced lie "stealing our property" again.
I can't read any more of that tripe without wanting to do violence, and since I hate violence I'll stop.