<story><title>GoDaddy has not withdrawn its official congressional support for SOPA </title><url>http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/npair/godaddy_has_not_withdrawn_its_official/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sidww2</author><text>While boycotting companies supporting SOPA is important, I feel the excessive focus on GoDaddy is distracting the community from the important issue of actually defeating SOPA/PIPA. The tech community really does not have the size and influence to be able to force even a fifth of the companies to withdraw their support of SOPA.&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming majority of the effort should be going to calling/sending (physical) letters to one&apos;s respective representatives, maybe setting up some sort of a fund to oppose SOPA/PIPA, urging tech companies like Google to spend more on lobbying (They can and should be spending more to lobby against the act), etc.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I was under the incorrect impression that OPEN act would end nonsense like SOPA/PIPA. Edited comment to reflect that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danilocampos</author><text>People, and movements, need victories. GoDaddy may not be anything close to the final blow against this nonsense, but that isn&apos;t important.&lt;p&gt;Here&apos;s the thing: it&apos;s the week of Christmas. People, including elected officials and their constituents, are traveling and distracted. The likelihood of a letter-writing campaign either getting off the ground of making an impressive impact is much slimmer than usual.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, a very particular company is identified as supportive of the legislation. It happens that their product is broadly used by the Internet community and that said product provides recurring revenue. The loss of numerous customers, as a result, has lasting impact.&lt;p&gt;And so the community responds and makes an example of this company. Do angels sing, heralding the end of bad legislation? No. But tech news outlets, which would have had nothing substantial to print, now get to focus their full attention again on SOPA, on how a company who supports it is brutally punished, and how the Internet business community is maybe something not to be fucked with after all. So now this is part of the story: Internet folk have teeth, there are consequences for supporting bad law. The best part is that GoDaddy doesn&apos;t even have to be wounded in any real sense – the story is enough to change the tone of the conversation. This is mostly a war of perceptions, so it&apos;s good to make the bad guys look like scheming clowns.&lt;p&gt;This strikes me as an incredible deal during an otherwise dead week. What would you have preferred in its place? How would the season impact such a proposal?&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; The overwhelming majority of the effort should be going to calling/sending (physical) letters to one&apos;s respective representatives, maybe setting up some sort of a fund to oppose SOPA/PIPA and support the OPEN act, urging tech companies like Google to spend more on lobbying (They can and should be spending more to lobby against the act), etc&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m sure you don&apos;t need me to point out the multitude of wonderful, free publishing platforms you&apos;re going to be able to use to make your case for just this course of action. Meanwhile, while you&apos;re putting that all together, let&apos;s see a little gratitude for the good luck of GoDaddy&apos;s incompetence and for the time and money spent by the many domain holders who made their point so clearly.&lt;p&gt;This is gonna be hard. We, the people, are way outgunned in terms of cash and lobbying. We need every victory we can get to keep the logs rolling.</text></comment>
<story><title>GoDaddy has not withdrawn its official congressional support for SOPA </title><url>http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/npair/godaddy_has_not_withdrawn_its_official/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sidww2</author><text>While boycotting companies supporting SOPA is important, I feel the excessive focus on GoDaddy is distracting the community from the important issue of actually defeating SOPA/PIPA. The tech community really does not have the size and influence to be able to force even a fifth of the companies to withdraw their support of SOPA.&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming majority of the effort should be going to calling/sending (physical) letters to one&apos;s respective representatives, maybe setting up some sort of a fund to oppose SOPA/PIPA, urging tech companies like Google to spend more on lobbying (They can and should be spending more to lobby against the act), etc.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I was under the incorrect impression that OPEN act would end nonsense like SOPA/PIPA. Edited comment to reflect that.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mike-cardwell</author><text>What evidence do you have that the number of letters has been negatively affected by the GoDaddy coverage?&lt;p&gt;This GoDaddy coverage has been perfect. If anything, &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; people know about SOPA than would have done otherwise. If anything, the number of letters being sent will have increased, not decreased.</text></comment>