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."
Why not use their own sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
Politicians use Google and Facebook too. Put messages there.
Heck, they could be really direct and block Google/Facebook for congressional IP ranges.
Lobby (Score:5, Interesting)
They should get serious (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of taking out a newspaper ad, the "new media giants" should take a page out of the unions' book and go on strike. No Google. No Facebook. No YouTube. Just put up a static page all day explaining the threat this law poses to new media. That would get people's attention.
Re:So the mere fact that the industry is buying ad (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think that many people will complain about corporations buying ads in newspapers to get their point out. How is it really any different from advertising? Except that while still trying to sway your opinion with their ad, they're not trying to sell you anything.
The problem with corporate "speech" is not when they spend a bunch of money on ads, it's when they hand bags of money to politicians and call them "campaign contributions". Somehow the SCOTUS equate giving money to someone as "speech", which it's not, it's a bribe. With these ads, there's zero money going from the corporations to the politicians; only the newspaper is getting any money, and we can presume they charge the same rates for these ads as they'd charge anyone else for that same ad space.
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
Politicians use Google and Facebook too. Put messages there.
Or you could get together with 87,834 of your closest friends and call them [tumblr.com].
It's good to see people mobilisation en masse to oppose this bill, but as others have said [google.com], it remains to be seen whether Congress will listen to anyone unless they dangle a cheque in front of their nose.
The big danger that I see [imagicity.com] is how dangerously regressive and backward-looking attitudes on the Hill are.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the recent House Judiciary Committee hearing was that Google, the sole opponent to the legislation allowed to present at the hearing, was castigated by most of the people there, impugned for purportedly profiting from piracy and cast as the villain in this whole affair.
Seeing one of the few growing and dynamic drivers of the information economy not only cast out of the fold but actively opposed, one can only conclude that the captains of the US media industry are perfectly content to cut their nose off to spite their face. They will burn the bridge represented by Google rather than cross it.
I see two immediate dangers if this regime is actually allowed to take the shape proposed for it:
The latter outcome is the more dangerous of the two. Losing influence in the direction the Internet’s development takes also means losing the uniquely American ethos of freedom and individualism.
There are numerous new media and technological players poised in the wings right now. But few of them (with the possible exception of Al Jazeera) have any moral stake in human rights or even individual expression. Not, at least, in the same way that many American developers do - that is, at the axiomatic level, rather than as a conscious overlay to their world view.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lobby (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy solution. Hollywood is great at lobbying. So the tech industry should just -buy- Hollywood. After all, the entirety of Hollywood would cost the big tech giants little really. Split it up, each tech giant can buy a studio, and just straight up fire the entire executive staff. Then going forward the media industry can lobby in a tech friendly manner.
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
Go for broke, I say. Get Facebook, Wiki(m|p)edia, Youtube, and Twitter to go dark for a day. Hell, they could go dark for an hour and still the world would riot. I don't like how integral these sites have become to day-to-day life for most people, when ten years ago none even existed,[1] but for Congress to think that the people in this country or this world care one iota about "e-parasites" when put up against Honey Badger [youtube.com] and Farmville is just bogus. Show Washington what this bill actually means for America and they'll all change. You can't get reelected on "I voted to shut down Facebook and Youtube."
1. Okay fine, Wikipedia was around, but few knew about it. Besides, it's for the sake of the narrative!
Re:They should get serious (Score:3, Interesting)
Why Ad? Old Media not reporting? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Protecting interests? (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact is that "creators" are pretty passive about this law, hovering from moderately for to moderately against, but they have nothing like the sort of passion you see around these parts. Here's a forum I read [gearslutz.com], everyone here is a recording engineer or sound designer in feature film, television and ads -- the original poster is a professional associate of mine. Most are pro-SOPA, because they see anyone who's vocally against it as objectively pro-turnstyle-jumping, and the people that are against are pretty measured, they never invoke fundamental human rights, and the focus on the practicality.
The fact is, if SOPA passes, the winners are Sony Pictures Distribution, Buena Vista Entertainment, and MTV Networks. If SOPA fails, the winners are Google, Facebook and Yahoo; either way, the biggest winners are middlemen. The anti-SOPA corporations would have you believe that SOPA is about squelching new art forms and creative channels, but it's really about making the advertising, aggregation, and monetization of new channels more or less practical, nothing more or less.
Content creators just sell there stuff one way or the other, and the practical ways off containing illicit copying are evolving. I'd personally much rather content creators continue to get their share of the box office, and they get a cut of all the ad and anciliary revenues as they do now. If Google and Facebook win, the ad revenues all walk out the door through the new middlemen, and maybe Google will give artists a 70% cut of some first (and really last) sale, but Google's going to use their data and aggregations thereof a hundred times over to make new applications, offer new services and SELL ADS, all of which will make them money. At least when somebody like Peter Jackson does a deal with New Line, New Line doesn't cut him off at a share of the box office, and then take no action to prevent people from xeroxing their ticket stubs.
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
The arrogance of little boys (Score:4, Interesting)
How old was Dennis Ritchie when he died just recently? WELL above 50. If you are 40 then computers were a part of your childhood.
Anyway, when recorded music was itself new, it didn't need long at all to be understood by politics and have the current copyright introduced. It is about the maturity in the industry as in knowing how the game is played (bribes). Google just doesn't get it.
This ad is a good example. Wall of text rather then a heart-warming story of innocent and pure-blooded American Google being bastarized by the evil japanse Sony music.
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not use their own sites? (Score:4, Interesting)