Friday, December 23, 2011

GoDaddy relents to anti-SOPA boycott pressure...next up?

The internet outrage was palpable, when GoDaddy announced its public support for SOPA. Immediately, others took to moving their domain name registrations and hosting to other companies who were offering anti-SOPA/GoDaddy deals, and every tech blog pounced on GoDaddy.

 So GoDaddy threw the towel in, realizing that the internet IS their business, and the internet community was in full backlash mode.

So I wondered, who's next to be boycotted? From the House's list, I thought these groups to be odd bedfellows:

  • ATR - Americans for Tax Reform (Grover Norquist)
  • Tiffany & Co.
  • Beachbody
  • CBBB - the Council of Better Business Bureaus
Now, don't get me wrong.  I know that counterfeiting is costing Americans manufacturing livelihood, but these people seem to simplistically gloss over SOPA's threats to the 1st, 5th and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution, namely free speech and due process.

Further, it's not as if the US doesn't already have anti-counterfeiting laws on the books; it's just that SOPA bypasses a lot of constitutional protections.  Here's a hint: increase import inspections of goods, to catch the counterfeit products making their way into the US, and hire full-time staff to search for Chinese sites that offer fake products openly -- that can't be too difficult, since they've been advertising ad links all over comment sections on the internet.

This isn't that hard to figure out.

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