Slashdot Mirror
New Media Giants Take Out Print Ad Against SOPA
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."
Politicians use Google and Facebook too. Put messages there.
Heck, they could be really direct and block Google/Facebook for congressional IP ranges.
The government.
"I like it when the red water comes out.."
Would that make any impact? This would appear the perfect moment to use all their lobbying power, clearly appealing to the masses is passe and doesn't work anymore in the US. Witness the OWS movement.
+Raider of the lost BBS
in support of their policy position, is to be considered prima facie evidence that they are evil and deceptive?
Whatever happened to free speech?
I seem to recall a recent candidate for the governorship of California spending something like $150 million of her own money on her campaign, much of it for TV ads. She outspent her opponent by more than five to one. What was the outcome of that? Ads can be very helpful for getting your side of the story across, but people make up their own minds whether to buy it or not.
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! 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.
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.
Just who's interests are these entities protecting, Ours, or their own?
Google owns Youtube. I dont think I need to explain that.
Facebook sells people's personal data, including photos, to advertisers.
Zygna has been embroiled at least once for outright stealing of graphical assets from other commercial games companies.
I am not saying to look the gift horse in the mouth here-- if it gets our dumbass leaders to shelve their onerous legislation and bury it at sea without honors, I am all for it, but I draw the line at saying these corporations represent *MY* interests.
An ad opposing legislation posted in the New York Times strikes me, at least, as posturing to the media. After all, Congress is located in Washington DC. An ad in the Washington Post would be much more likely to be read by the Congressperson him/herself. If they were serious about this, the ad should have appeared in the Washington Post and probably LA Times, too.
Why would a newspaper ad about internet censorship be ironic? Does the SOPA bill have something to do with newspapers, or is the irony specifically about the NY Times running the ad?
So I guess the irony is lost on at least one person.
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.
You just wish your ID was as low as mine! I used to be proud to have such a low id, but not so much now. Slashdot most
If I had to guess, despite the summary's "irony of taking out a newspaper ad to protect the Web" being "lost on no one", that the irony will be lost on the RIAA, the MPAA, Righthaven, LLC, and most members of Congress.
Grow a pair and put something about it on their logo/main search page? They can change it for International-Paper-Mache-With-Your-Kids Day, but not for THIS??!?
Maybe just a new Google Doodle.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Considering how disconnected politicians and lawmakers are from technology issues in general, i think it's a fairly good idea to post the ad in a newspaper. Seems to me this bill should be stopped with all means available...
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
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.
"The President of the United States and all of Congress is basically going to tell Silicon Valley to go fuck off."
He will get a very unpleasant surprise on the next fund-raising trip if he tries that.
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.
Are you sure about that? I think Citizens United was more about the first one than the second one.
The concern is that advertising sets the tone for a campaign. If a specific candidate supports SOPA and world+dog outside of Hollywood (including the candidate's district) opposes it, advertising that fact will cause the candidate to lose votes. And there will be issues of that nature for any candidate, which de facto allows corporations to crush anyone they don't like merely by bringing up the specific issues that make them unpopular in their home districts.
Not that I'm complaining about it in this specific instance. I'll take any help I can get to kill SOPA, and may all its advocates lose their seats.
I'm sorry, I don't see the problem. If the issue really is unpopular, and the corporations merely point out the candidate's stand on the issue, then what's the problem? As long as they're not committing libel, it's fine. Otherwise, how are you supposed to know the candidate's stand? Listen to the candidate's own paid advertisements? Listen to the biased media? Listen to political action groups' paid ads? Oh wait, how is a PAC (which isn't a person either) different from a corporation? It's not.
It's not like the corporation is directly advocating a certain politician; they're just stating their stand on an issue, and trying to convince others to agree. I'm fine with that. They're also not giving money to any politicians; that's called "lobbying" (or "bribery"), and I'm entirely against that.
Google and Facebook can drop the politicians who support this bill from their respective sites....completely. Sorry, Congressman, you don't turn up in search any more, no Facebook page. Oh, and that email to your constituents? Sorry, gmail doesn't recognize your account.
If these guys want to make a statement, they should disconnect the user accounts of all politicians who support SOPA. I'm sure it's within their ludicrously one-sided ToSs to exclude members at a whim (and it's legal as long as it's not discrimination). It'd be a nice reminder about what life would be like without these tech services.
The irony of taking out a newspaper ad to protect the Web is certainly lost on no one.
It's lost on me, you insensitive clod.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If the new media companies like google and facebook don't like what the government is planning threaten to de-invest in the USA. By that I mean start moving jobs, charity work, headquarters overseas to someplace with reasonable laws. I promise that a full page ad in the New York times about the issue will generate less controversy than headlines reading:
Google moving 10,000 jobs overseas, says government stifles growth.
Why didn't they buy enough politicians? The entertainment industry never has had any problems with that.
I guess the Old Media are not reporting about this. If this law passes, it is also a victory of the Old Media, I guess, because free speech will return to where it all started: the daily newspaper.
Free speech only works if it's pro M.I.C..
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
The problem is that if you can choose the issues that get media attention then you can choose the winner. As between a candidate that agrees with the majority of a district on 80% of the important issues vs. one that agrees on substantially fewer, you would expect the first candidate to win. But if you throw ten million dollars behind a campaign to bring the the remaining 20% of issues to the forefront of the debate, you cause the "better" candidate to lose. Which you can do merely because you disagree with the candidate on one of the issues for which that candidate agrees with the majority of the district, if you have a big enough pile of money.
You don't even have to find issues where the candidate disagrees with the majority. If the majority of the district supports strong measures against illegal immigration and so does the candidate, but 80% of Spanish-speaking constituents strongly oppose those measures, you run ads describing the candidate's position in Spanish. If the candidate is pro choice, you run ads on religious TV networks. If the candidate is pro life, you run ads on liberal women's networks. If the candidate opposes further unfunded increases in Medicare benefits, you put ads in AARP publications, etc.
It's easy to destroy an honest candidate by telling the truth in inconvenient places.
[citation needed]
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If a specific candidate supports SOPA and world+dog outside of Hollywood (including the candidate's district) opposes it, advertising that fact will cause the candidate to lose votes.
What about if the world+dog outside of hollywood is largely unaware of SOPA, as is the case here?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Wait wait wait - you're asking why everyone has a problem with corporate-sponsored political ads, then go through the laundry list of issues of information sources that can't possibly be more biased, but are at least nominally supposed to be less biased?
Here's the second part: when they're putting out ads that are 100% match of a candidates position, it doesn't matter whether that they're not directly giving to a candidates campaign. They might as well, because the result is 100% the same.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Democracy error.
Should have spent it putting it into the politicians' hands. Money talks, ads look pretty (and who reads an ad?)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think politicians should first consider "Hmm... would I apply this law to 'people' like Ford? Or Universal? Or Bank of America?" If the answer is no, then the law is, in all likelihood, unjust. Granted, they'll probably enact it anyway, knowing it's unjust but, you know... baby steps. :)
Am I the only person on Slashdot who thinks if this law passes the Supreme Court will knock it down as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech?
After all, corporations are people now, so Google's right to free speech is the same as Sony's.
Even the European Parliament has spoken out against SOPA in a resolution on the transatlantic summit in two weeks:
[The European Parliament s]tresses the need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication by refraining from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names;
Am I the only person on Slashdot who thinks if this law passes the Supreme Court will knock it down as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech?
The same Supreme Court that said eminent domain didn't just apply to taking property from private owners when needed for a public use, but also applied to taking private property and giving it to a different private owner, as long as the new owner would end up paying more taxes on it? Those guys?
Putting your faith in the Supreme Court is a foolish thing to do. They'll say the Constitution means whatever they want it to mean... or whoever pays them says it means. (The Congress isn't the only bribe-taking outfit in the District of Corruption.)
Google, Facebook, and Zynga should implement a splash page that says, "Warning! This content has not yet been approved by U.S. government sensors. Do you wish to continue?"
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
OK, so what's your solution? Don't allow anyone to say anything about any candidate, and only allow the candidates advertise themselves? Basically, you're saying that free speech shouldn't be allowed.
So you're saying that no one should be allowed to ever say anything about any political issues in a public forum?
You don't even have to find issues where the candidate disagrees with the majority. If the majority of the district supports strong measures against illegal immigration and so does the candidate, but 80% of Spanish-speaking constituents strongly oppose those measures, you run ads describing the candidate's position in Spanish. If the candidate is pro choice, you run ads on religious TV networks. If the candidate is pro life, you run ads on liberal women's networks. If the candidate opposes further unfunded increases in Medicare benefits, you put ads in AARP publications, etc.
This is over-simplified. If you're in one of those target demographics, it can certainly seem as you've described. But each of the targeted ads you're talking about appeals only to a subset of the voting bloc. If you convince AARP members to vote against a candidate, that still leaves a significant portion of the population that looks at other issues. Unless your candidate fits *all* of the criteria -- in which case you are, in fact, finding issues where the candidate disagrees with the majority (or every minority, which amounts to the same thing).
Here.
Dear World.
As a US citizen I would like to ask a favor of you.
PLEASE FIREWALL US.
This experiment know as Democracy has pretty much failed here. Save yourselves, don't let it spread to you.
Most citizens of the USA don't give a crap about how their Government works. Most don't even have a clue who their elected Representative are.
If you are waiting for some kind of awakening or uprising here in the USA, Don't hold your breath.
To the tech companies of the USA. MOVE OUT, GO AWAY. Relocate to a country that actually gives a rats ass about things like freedom of speech.
If you cant find a country, create one.
I dont think that the average American can change their ways enough to make a difference, but I could be wrong.
In the off chance that I am wrong perhaps you could set up a week of NO INTERNET. Group together with as many companies as you can muster and shut down everything for 1 week. Just for the USA. Also dont just do it. Let everyone know in advance. Post it everywhere to let people know why your doing it.
If that doesnt help.....MOVE OUT OF THE USA.....just let me know where your going to move to....Ill need a job when I move there as well.
Long Live Democracy....FUCK CORPORATE CAPITALISM.
No, it's the other way around. The problem is that corporations have more money, so they can buy more speech than the actual candidates. The answer to speech is more speech, so the answer to money is more money. Public financing of elections.
Probably the best way to do it is some kind of anti-matching funds system, where every dollar someone spends against you means that you get an extra dollar of public financing so that you can answer the attack. (I'm not sure whether that is constitutional under the existing caselaw, but it certainly ought to be if it isn't.)
Unless your candidate fits *all* of the criteria -- in which case you are, in fact, finding issues where the candidate disagrees with the majority (or every minority, which amounts to the same thing).
It's really not the same thing at all. Every candidate disagrees with a majority of minorities about something, and if that issue is the only one they have on their minds when they go to the voting booth, you can convince them each to vote against their own interest.
For example, if you're a retired person, you might agree with a candidate on 9/10 issues, but if no one is talking about those issues and the TV tells you that candidate wants to make Medicare more expensive for you, you're liable to vote against them even though it's not in your own self interest. You'll get your Medicare but you'll lose the other 9 issues that together matter to you significantly more than higher copays (because nobody had enough money to tell you that before you went to the voting booth).
No, it's the other way around. The problem is that corporations have more money, so they can buy more speech than the actual candidates. The answer to speech is more speech, so the answer to money is more money. Public financing of elections.
The problem with this is: how much should taxpayers be giving candidates to finance their elections? And which candidates? If some unknown guy wants to run for President, why shouldn't he get the same funding that Rick Perry gets? Or what if one of the candidates is a billionaire, and spends a couple billion on his campaign? Should the taxpayer foot a couple billion each for all the other candidates? Or are you going to restrict how much the billionaire is allowed to spend?
Personally I think any attempts at reforming campaigning are a complete waste of time as long as we're not allowed to have more than two parties, and the only way to fix that is to move to a different election system, preferably Condorcet. Unless that happens, you're only going to have a choice between corporatist candidate A and corporatist candidate B, who pander to different groups but have identical policies when they're in office.
My point is that in aggregate it's the same thing. If I'm portrayed as having views that oppose ten different minorities, then those ten minorities are no longer a minority at all (assuming no major crossover between them).
If I'm portrayed as having views that oppose just one minority, that one minority isn't going to significantly change the outcome -- because they're not a minority.
If some unknown guy wants to run for President, why shouldn't he get the same funding that Rick Perry gets?
Some people say that he should. Naturally that would cost a lot of money.
There is another reasonable alternative, which is what a lot of the states that do state-level public financing do: You require the candidate to raise a threshold amount of money themselves from small donors (e.g. $10 each from at least 10,000 individual donors) before they qualify for public money. That keeps you from having to give millions of tax dollars to a bunch of loons without strictly limiting yourself to major party candidates.
Or what if one of the candidates is a billionaire, and spends a couple billion on his campaign? Should the taxpayer foot a couple billion each for all the other candidates? Or are you going to restrict how much the billionaire is allowed to spend?
There are three reasons why this isn't a problem. The first is that someone spending billions of dollars on a campaign is so rare that paying the money once in a blue moon would hardly bankrupt the government even if every dollar was matched. The second is that ad buys have diminishing returns after a certain threshold level of saturation, so if we had a limit of e.g. $50M of public money for a campaign, a billionaire spending a billion dollars would have an advantage, but it wouldn't be anywhere near the advantage that a millionaire spending a couple million dollars currently has over someone who only has a hundred thousand dollars. And the third is that if you do match the full amount, you won't see as many billionaires wanting to spend outrageous sums because they won't be able to buy elections anymore; in order for spending money to help you, you would actually have to be better candidate, because the population is going to hear more from both sides instead of just from you.
Let me give you an example. Suppose there are three minority groups who each comprise 33% of the population, call them A, B, and C, who each support one issue, 'a', 'b', and 'c', respectively. Each group opposes the two issues other than the one they support, so A opposes 'b' and 'c', B opposes 'a' and 'c', and C opposes 'a' and 'b'.
Now you bring in two candidates, one that opposes all three of the issues against one that supports all three issues. Let's say each group feels about equally strongly about each issue. If the voters are fully informed, the candidate in opposition to everything should naturally win with almost 100% of the vote, because for every voter, the voter agrees with that candidate on two of the three issues and with the other candidate on only one of the three.
So now let's leave the ideal world where all the voters know all the candidates positions and enter the more realistic one where they don't know until someone tells them. In comes the ad man, who runs ads emphasizing issue 'a' in media consumed primarily by Group A, issue 'b' in media consumed primarily by Group B, and issue 'c' in media consumed primarily by Group C. Most members of Group A will then have no idea what either candidate's position is on issues 'b' and 'c', etc. So members of Group A go to the polls and cast their votes based on issue 'a', Group B casts their votes based on issue 'b', and Group C casts their votes based on issue 'c'.
The candidate that each voter agrees with on only one of the three issues then wins over the candidate that each voter agrees with on two out of three, solely because the voters were selectively informed about the candidates' positions.
It is certainly lost on me. How exactly is this ironic? Seriously, I don't get it.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Simply use SOPA against SOPA supporters. Claim copyright ownership of the websites of Senators and Representatives who voted for it, of the lobbying groups who supported it, especially all prominent individual members who supported it.
Do this for every public message they try to get out, wherever they post. If & once a claim is rejected, another person comes along to claim copyright ownership and restart the process.
The problem is the "winner take all" voting system, where 51% of the votes means you get 100% of the political power. Not only do third party candidates "waste your vote", but so do major party candidates in any area that leans towards the other party. Winner take all systems are inherently unrepresentative because all the people who voted against the winner end up not represented. We need a couple of fixes to the system:
(1) Proportional representation - if you get 5% of the votes, you get 5% of the political power.
(2) Campaign promises are contracts - if you break them, the voters are free to choose someone else to represent them, at any time.
Shutting google down for just one day would be more than enough to drive the point across.
An exercise to drive just how integral they are to the internet as we know it:
1) Install NoScript, or RequestPolicy, or both.
2) Configure them to only block google.com, googleapi.com, and any of the other google services.
3) If you can manage a whole day of browsing like that, hats off, I couldn't even manage 10 minutes with all of the website that break when you block all traffic to google.
I understand what you're saying - I just don't agree ;)
It's what I meant by oversimplifying in my original post - it's not a matter of 3 minority groups [hmm - "voting blocs" is probably more accurate than "minority groups"] it's a matter of dozens. Each one has its own set of favorite issues. You can get a subset of voting groups to oppose a candidate (or support a candidate) but as the number of groups increases, the voting power of each group decreases.
You can get a subset of voting groups to oppose a candidate (or support a candidate) but as the number of groups increases, the voting power of each group decreases.
I don't dispute that, but how does it change anything? It only increases the number of groups available to be selectively informed, which if anything only makes the problem worse because someone with money can still afford to do it and someone with less money is less able to afford to undo it.
In addition to that, most elections are close. If the vote would have been 55% to 45%, you don't have to change the votes of every voting block, only of the 5% in the opposite camp who are most easily swayed.