Outright Villainy said:
Kapol said:
As others have said, I still say go for it. They still supported, and therefore still do support, SOPA. I doubt the boycott has honestly changed their mind in anything other then openly admitting to supporting the bill. Let them be an example for all companies... the internet does not forgive, and it does not forget.
Of course, I'm wondering why GoDaddy is the only company being targeted like this. Unless I missed something (entirely possible), it seems smarter to go after the bigger companies supporting the bill. Companies like Sony and Nintendo (I didn't mention Microsoft because I'm not entirely sure they support it, but it'd be no surprise if they did and therefore deserve the flames). Attacking the bigger companies WOULD have a bigger impact. That'd likely decrease the number of lobbiest with their hand in the government's pockets on this... I mean... 'giving evidence this law is good that seems to be only provided by their paid experts' (Yea right, heh).
Attacking bigger companies would have a greater effect, if you could actually do anything to them. The percentage of internet savvy people who customers of those companies is very small, and a boycott would have relatively little impact. For a site that bases its business in webhosting though, I would say the vast majority of their userbase have joined the boycott, hence the extremely quick retraction. GoDaddy will likely be finished because of this.
That is true, but if every single gamer, every single even slightly technical person who doesn't like this law, told the companies that we won't stand for this and refuse to buy any of their products if they continue to support it, I think they'd listen
if we held to it. That last part, of course, is the issue. There will always be people willing to jump on this boycott. But there aren't nearly as many ready to follow through with it. And those who do may not make themselves heard because they think their alone and therefore don't think it'd matter if they actually said something.
Imagine if every single person, or even a good majority, of people opposing this law just stopped buying Sony products. No DVDs, no TVs, no Games, no anything. Not even buying anything that would give them a profit (like third-party PS3 games and similar items). It may not be enough to bring the company close to bankrupcy. They may only lose 5-10% of their total sales. But you know what? I'm confident that'd be enough to get them to listen. And that goes for pretty much all the larger companies out there supporting it.
Or, of course, we could try raising public awareness. I had another, somewhat similar idea where those who oppose it start an 'anti-SOPA campaign' publically. Threaten to smear any politician who supports the bill and reduce their chances of reelection. Of course, that'd take funds, but speading the word of the damage SOPA could do to people who even only use Facebook would help a lot. Right now it seems very self-contained in the internet-savvy community. That isn't helping us.
