New Media Giants Take Out Print Ad Against SOPA 234
itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall that the SOPA hearings earlier this week 'excluded any witnesses who advocate for civil rights. Google's Katherine Oyama was the only witness to object to the bill in a meaningful way.' So to get the attention of lawmakers, new media giants Google, Facebook, and Zynga turned to the only place they knew that politicians gather daily. They took out a full page ad in the New York Times. The irony of taking out a newspaper ad to protect the Web is certainly lost on no one."
What a useless article... (Score:5, Informative)
Its three needlessly long paragraphs reiterating what was said in the summary and contains links or scans to the ad in question. How did something like this get voted to the front page?
If you're going to link to a site talking about it, at least link to a site that has the ad! [boingboing.net] Two seconds with Google people, was that really all that hard? I just wish these guys would have mentioned in the ad the combined net worth of all their companies and contrasted it to the net worth of the media empires trying to ram this shit through. Would have really gotten people talking and asking the hard questions.
Old as shit (Score:5, Informative)
This was on every other website on the internet yesterday when the ad appeared. Today the rest of the internet is covering how 27 tech companies are supporting SOPA:
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/17/which-tech-companies-back-sopa-microsoft-apple-and-27-others/
I realize this might be unsettling for Slashdot users used to living in the past. Sorry for that.
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:5, Informative)
You are thinking too small. To be truly effective, each of these sites should have a total blackout for one day. Coordinate, and choose one day that they actively refuse every connection made to any of their servers. 24 house for the entire world to see what it will be like to have no Google, no YouTube, No Gmail, no Facebook, No Zynga (kinda redundant with no Facebook, I know...) Heck, cut off all those useful Android utilities while you are at it.
24 hours worth of profits to most of these companies is chump change... 24 hours of profits lost by those other companies who rely on these services though would make a huge impact. One that could not be ignored.
Re:Why NY Times? (Score:4, Informative)
For starters, when you run a nationwide full page political ad, you traditionally do it in the NYT. Sort of like when you give a civil rights speech, you do it on the steps on the Lincoln memorial. Second, there are two nationwide newspapers - USA Today and the New York Times. USA Today has a higher distribution due to hotels and whatnot, but NYT is a paper people actually pay for and read.
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:4, Informative)
No they don't. Their staffers take care of their representation on Facebook and the like. Ted Stevens represented the most knowledgeable politician with respect to the Internet.
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday. I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. [] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.