Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve been saying this for a while now and it’s only getting truer: the SOPA war is being lost because the people fighting against it have let hatred for their intellectual opponents compromise their case.

Rather than treat the other side as misguided everyone insists on treating them as evil. Using force as the only tool rather than trying to convince people.

Look at all the people who are STILL attacking GoDaddy! The point of a boycott is to give the company a chance to be in good standing again if they do what you want. If you then continue to attack after they’ve given in you remove any incentive for other companies to bend to your demands. This is very basic logic.

While on the other side the Media Companies are offering nothing but incentives. Read the last couple of paragraphs of the article. The Media Companies are rewarding Spain with all kinds of investments that they were holding up until the law gets passed.

I honestly think the media companies are going to give up on SOPA but only for PR reasons. They’ll then slip each individual component into other legislation so it goes virtually unnoticed. That’s what they did in Spain in that the SEL was a general law aimed at stimulus to maintain the economy not specifically about media (translate the “critics” section of this page: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_de_Econom%C3%ADa_Sostenible).

But that’s the problem with forcing people rather than convincing them. Eventually you have to look away and that’s when they go back to doing exactly what you tried to stop.

Yes, as a long term strategy, that's definitely needed. And I also think we should write something like the Bill of Rights for the Internet.

But, for now, with so little time left, I think it's much more important to send the message that any politician who supports SOPA can kiss goodbye to their political career. The same goes for companies supporting it - massive short term and long term boycotts.

I don't see how this strategy could work. The reality is most people don't care about SOPA or even understand the consequences of it. No politician is going to get thrown out because of it (especially not with Media Companies money behind them allowing them to run ads on Abortion, Gay Marriage, and a bunch of other hedge issues that large portions of people actually do care about)

I mean, lets be honest here. The media companies can pump way more money into the system then SOPA opposers can take out with a boycott. If that weren't the case this battle would have been won long ago.

The only way you win this fight is by getting enough normal people to care about SOPA and that isn't accomplished through boycotts. It's accomplished by talking to people outside the insular tech community.

The difference between misguided and evil is often not especially clear or relevant: the simple fact is political exercise is by its very nature polarizing.

So: the fact that companies are in a position to directly manipulate Spanish politics _is evil_. It _is_ the use of naked force: I defy you to argue that they are not 'compromising' their logical case.

Force and 'convincin' are merely two tools in a Machiavellian view of politics. And as you seem to imply, the Media Companies are quite willing to be Machiavellian, so there isn't really any particular reason for the opposition (us) to try to hold on to a high moral ground.

Sometimes a company needs to go down in flames as an example.

I don't know how you could be more wrong. But to go down the points...

Misguided vs Evil: An evil person tries to do the wrong thing while a misguided person does it on accident. How is that hard to understand? More importantly how is that not relevant. An evil person can't be convinced by their nature while a misguided person can.

Force vs Conversation: This is only true if the people passionate about SOPA have the power to force someone to do something. They don't. Their goal is to convince enough people to join them so they will have the power to do something.

On companies going down in flames: First, GoDaddy is not going down in flames. The internet community clearly doesn't have the power to do that as has been shown. So trying to deal from a position of power when you've been proven not to have that power is a strategy.

Second, what point does this example make? You're trying to make companies give up support for SOPA but, BY DEFINITION, these are companies that already support it. They can't go back in time and not support it. So how does killing GoDaddy even after they've folded do anything productive?

>Misguided vs Evil: An evil person tries to do the wrong thing while a misguided person does it on accident. How is that hard to understand? More importantly how is that not relevant. An evil person can't be convinced by their nature while a misguided person can.

uh. I don't want to point you down the road of the misunderstood villain, because I find that sort of thing is insulting to evil. But that's the best I can do. The world is still black and white to you seriously??

> Force vs Conversation: This is only true if the people passionate about SOPA have the power to force someone to do something. They don't. Their goal is to convince enough people to join them so they will have the power to do something.

this is actually just wrong. I don't feel bad crossing decorum since you started off your post with "I don't know how you could be more wrong." At least that's a confession of your ignorance.

In the future when you confess ignorance consider examining your ignorance.

Power is people, dude.

>On companies going down in flames: First, GoDaddy is not going down in flames.

Twenty bucks against. Also, fuck the rest of that paragraph.

>Second, what point does this example make? You're trying to make companies give up support for SOPA but, BY DEFINITION, these are companies that already support it. They can't go back in time and not support it. So how does killing GoDaddy even after they've folded do anything productive?

When you make an example of something you're looking towards the future. Obviously. In school did you think examples were for the text's benefit?

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