SOPA Supporters Learning (Slowly) That Pissing Off Reddit Is A Bad Idea

from the don't-mess-with-reddit dept

There's been a lot of talk in the past few days about the companies supporting SOPA. As we've noted, it's pretty damn difficult to find too many individuals who like SOPA (or PROTECT IP), but there are a fair number of companies who might find it advantageous to be able to cause all sorts of problems for foreign competition. There are a few lists floating around of SOPA supporters, but Andrew Couts has put together a big list of 439 organizations culled both from the Judiciary Committee's website and the letter sent by the US Chamber of Commerce in support of the law.

We'd noted that there was some backlash towards companies supporting SOPA, but as more and more people recognize how bad these laws are, it's getting more attention. Add to that the awesome power of Reddit... and the whole thing has kicked into overdrive.

Enemy number one on the list appears to be GoDaddy, with Redditor's organizing a day (Dec. 29th) for GoDaddy customers to transfer their domains away from the registrar. We've discussed GoDaddy's bizarre support for the law in the past -- including the fact that, under the original definitions of SOPA, GoDaddy itself qualified as a "rogue site" since it recommended people buy domains violating the trademarks of lots of big companies. Of course, it's also notable that GoDaddy recently hired a top lawyer... whose previous job was in "IP enforcement" for the federal government.

GoDaddy doesn't quite seem to know how to deal with the rising backlash on Reddit, and has (somewhat bizarrely) reissued two previous statements about SOPA. The first was what it wrote when the bill first came out, and the second was its filing for the original (November 15th) Judiciary Committee hearings on SOPA. Neither of these statements address the concerns of the folks on Reddit and appear to be very much a "talk to the hand!" response to the Reddit community. I would suggest that this may not have been the keenest strategic move on the part of GoDaddy. And it's not just small domain holders. Ben Huh, CEO of the infamous (and awesome) Cheezburger network of sites is promising to move all 1,000+ of his domains off of GoDaddy unless it changes its position on SOPA.

Others on the list of supporters are starting to feel the wrath of Reddit for supporting SOPA as well. 3M, who has been a strong supporter is discovering that their customers are not pleased: Others are starting to feel similar pressure. It wouldn't surprise me to see some of the companies start backing down. In fact, we're already hearing that some of the companies on the list (especially the law firms) have no idea how they got on the list in the first place. Some of the law firms may have clients who support the law, but that's a big difference from actually supporting the law themselves.

On top of that, the backlash is coming out in other ways as well. Paul Graham, the founder/head of YCombinator (where Reddit was first incubated) has announced that he will bar employees from any of those companies from attending YCombinator's famed Demo Days. For those in the Silicon Valley/entrepreneurship/startup world, you know that YCombinator Demo Days are a big deal. It's where all sorts of amazing new stuff gets launched, and big deals are made. Barring SOPA supporters from that event can really hurt those companies. Graham made himself clear:

Several of those companies send people to Demo Day, and when I saw the list I thought: we should stop inviting them. So yes, we’ll remove anyone from those companies from the Demo Day invite list.

He's apparently told the people in charge of Demo Day invites not to allow anyone from those lists. "I don’t know exactly which companies had people on the list. But I know which will now: none of them." He furthermore told TechCrunch that he'll recommend YCombinator startups not take investment money from any of those companies too: "If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?"

Either way, what's becoming clear is that even if some companies support the law, it's not because it's good for their customers. It's precisely the opposite. It's because it'll be useful as a protectionist law to stomp out competition or to protect against having to adapt to innovation. In the past, consumers might not have paid attention, but thanks to efforts like what Reddit and others (Tumblr, Wikipedia, etc.) are doing, it seems like those consumers are starting to speak up and make themselves heard. And the end result is going to be bad for business for the companies supporting SOPA.

Filed Under: activism, boycotts, net roots, pipa, protect ip, sopa, supporters
Companies: 3m, godaddy, reddit, ycombinator

GoDaddy Takes Down Entire Site Of Copyright Attorney/Photographer Over Bogus DMCA Claim

from the life-under-SOPA dept

As much as I appreciate and highlight the importance of the DMCA's safe harbors, there remain many troubling parts of the law. The notice and takedown process is particularly questionable, in that it involves shooting first and asking questions later. When we're dealing with a system that gets so many false notices, taking down first seems kind of crazy. David Canton points us to the news of a copyright lawyer and photographer, who had her entire site shut down by GoDaddy (of course), after it received a single, totally bogus, DMCA claim. Apparently someone claimed copyright on a photograph that the blogger, Carolyn Wright, had taken herself. The DMCA claim was just wrong. And while GoDaddy is required to remove the specific infringing content if it wishes to retain safe harbor protections, it appears to have gone way beyond that in shutting the entire site down. Thankfully the situation was resolved when Wright reached out to the person sending the letter, who apologized and withdrew the claim.

That said, get ready for this kind of story becoming a lot more common if SOPA or PROTECT IP becomes law. Totally bogus takedowns happen all the time under the DMCA but are usually (though not in this case, apparently) limited specifically to the infringing content. Under SOPA you'll see a lot more drastic action, cutting off sites from ad revenue or payment processing -- with no requirement to turn them back on, even if a counternotice is filed. This is exactly why a private "notice" provision in SOPA is so scary.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, photo, takedown
Companies: godaddy

Go Daddy Supports E-PARASITE Legislation Even Though Its Own Site Is Dedicated To Theft Of Property Under Terms Of The Bill

from the find-a-new-gc,-folks dept

The supporters of the new E-PARASITE Act (the even worse version of the already dreadful PROTECT IP) have been pretty desperate trying to find any "tech" companies to support these bills. It's kind of amusing that the only ones they've been able to turn up so far have been some of the most hated companies around among techies. First, they had Monster Cable go to Congress in support of the bill, without even realizing that in Monster Cable's view, "sites dedicated to piracy" would include eBay, Craigslist, Sears and Costco, among others -- basically proving the point that the broad private right to action in the bill would be massively abused.

Their latest attempt to roll out a "tech company" supporting these bills is equally hated and equally laughable. I know that any time I mention GoDaddy in almost any context on this site, the anti-GoDaddy comments come flying fast and furious. So its reputation in tech circles is already suspect. And while in the past it was skeptical of E-PARASITE's predecessor, COICA, it appears that GoDaddy has been convinced to be the latest "tech company" to talk about why such laws are a good idea. The company's general counsel, Christine Jones, published a laughably misleading op-ed in the paywalled section of Politico. I won't bother quoting it directly, given that I don't want to be accused of circumventing DRM and face having my entire website shut down by an overzealous "notification" to my registrar under E-PARASITE (or merely an ICE seizure).

However, the really stunning thing is that Jones doesn't even seem to understand the bill that she's supporting. Specifically, she doesn't seem to recognize not just the compliance costs it puts on GoDaddy (or maybe she's hoping, as a large player, that GoDaddy is better to withstand the costs, while smaller competitors may go out of business -- but that's a particularly cynical viewpoint). She also doesn't seem to realize that under the bill's broad definitions GoDaddy itself is a "site dedicated to the theft of US property".

That's because among the definitions of a site that's "dedicated to the theft of US property" is this: if the site "is marketed by its operator... for use in offering goods or services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates... the sale, distribution, or promotion of goods, services, or materials bearing a counterfeit mark, as that term is defined in section 34(d) of the Lanham Act or section 2320 of title 18, United States Code." In other words, if you operate a site that enables or facilitates the sale of goods that bear a counterfeit mark... you're dedicated to theft of US property. So, let's take a quick wander over to GoDaddy... and, just for fun, let's see what happens if we try to register the domain Rolex.com. Rolex.com is obviously taken, but... oh wait... what's this... GoDaddy is recommending that I might want to register these other domains that are perfect for infringing sites. Ok. What about gucci.com? Oh look... more of the same: And, how about Autodesk, which has been an aggressive mover against anything that "infringes" on its intellectual property. Yup. It certainly looks like GoDaddy isn't just enabling the sale of goods that bear a counterfeit mark... but it's actively encouraging it. I think a very credible case could be made that, under this bill, GoDaddy is "dedicated to theft of U.S. property."

Yes, GoDaddy's own general counsel is supporting a law that could be used to kill GoDaddy and force it offline. Makes you wonder if she even read the bill. GoDaddy might want reconsider its support of this law until it finds a lawyer who actually understands what the law says.

Filed Under: christine jones, e-parasite, rogue sites
Companies: godaddy

Parade Of Strawmen Dominate House Hearing About Online Infringement

from the the-lies-told-to-congress dept

We've already mentioned how the House's Hearing on: "Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites" turned into something of a bitchfest at Google for not waving a magic wand and stopping infringement. However, I also wanted to look at the prepared statements of the four participants, which seemed to overflow with ridiculous strawmen.

First up, we have esteemed and respected First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who (it is always said) defended the NY Times in the Pentagon Papers case many years ago. While Abrams is widely respected, it feels like lately he's been getting quite sloppy in his thinking. Late last year, he published a piece trying to differentiate Wikileaks from the NY Times/Pentagon Papers situation, and was widely criticized for getting many of his facts wrong -- undermining his entire argument.

Separately, various parties in the entertainment industry apparently hired Abrams to write a paper defending COICA and domain seizures as not violating the First Amendment. The entertainment industry and domain seizure supporters now point to that paper and stick their fingers in their ears every time anyone points out how domain seizures are, quite clearly, prior restraint. At the hearing, Abrams reprises this "there's no violation" (pdf) claim, but once again the reasoning is tortured, at best, and built by setting up strawmen to knock down, initially, before a more balanced section later in his talk. From the beginning though, strawmen abound:

It is one thing to say that the Internet must be free; it is something else to say that it must be lawless. Even the Wild West had sheriffs, and even those who use the Internet must obey duly adopted laws.... Thus, it is no surprise that libel law routinely applies to material that appears on the Internet just as it does to other material.... Copyright law is no different. One current treatise succinctly notes, "[a]ll existing copyright protections are applicable to the Internet."

Note the strawman? He seems to be claiming that critics of domain seizures are suggesting copyright law does not apply online. But that's simply not true at all. Why make that claim other than to avoid the actual First Amendment issues raised?

The law could not be clearer, however, that injunctions are a longstanding, constitutionally sanctioned way to remedy and prevent copyright violations. That premise was explicit in the critical concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s most famous prior restraint case, assessing publication of the Pentagon Papers in New York Times Co. v. United States. As Justice Byron White’s concurring opinion observed in that case, "no one denies that a newspaper can properly be enjoined from publishing the copyrighted works of another."

Again, this is the same strawman. No one is arguing that copyright infringement cannot not be dealt with via injunctions. We're arguing that non-infringing speech is being taken down without a proper injunction. Abrams does address some of these issues later in his talk, and even brings up the takedown of mooo.com. While he urges that Congress understand the tradeoffs, he doesn't seem particularly troubled by the existing mistakes made in seizing domains.

Finally, at the end of his talk, he goes back to the strawmen. He brings up two arguments that he claims he hears from civil liberties groups, who he normally sides with, which he disagrees over. The first is that censorship by seizing domain names makes the US less credible in discussions with other countries who censor. Abrams dismisses this by saying it's okay to censor this way because copyright infringement is not protected by the First Amendment. Again, he is missing the point in a big, bad and dangerous way. The concern people have is not about infringement being censored. After all, specific instances of infringement can be targeted. The concern is over the non-infringing speech that is also censored as a part of this. On top of that, he doesn't seem to understand how these seizures are already being used by foreign nations who censor content. They are simply mimicking Abram's defense here. When he says "copyright infringement is not free speech," they just say "right, same thing here, speech promoting other political parties is not free speech."

Abrams second "objection" that he's heard from civil liberties groups is "that stealing is somehow less offensive when carried out online." I'm not sure from whom he heard that, because I've never heard that argument made at all and I follow this stuff pretty closely. I'm guessing he's conflating a few different issues. What many people will point out is that (1) infringement is different than theft and (2) infringement online has a very different impact than "theft" of the same content in the offline world and (3) there are different and much more effective ways to deal with infringement online (mostly by way of smarter business models). That's a very different argument than the strawman Abrams presents in his testimony.

Moving on, we have our favorite strawman conflater, John Morton from Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement unit, who also reprised various strawmen (pdf) in his statement. Morton's specialty is in talking up the harm and danger of one specific type of trademark infringement, vaguely lump it together with unsubstantiated (or outright false) claims from industry representatives, and then pop out at the other end with a claim that stopping copyright infringement is necessary. It's ridiculous when you break it down, but watch him do it here:

Criminals are attempting to steal American ideas and products and sell them over the Internet, in flea markets, in legitimate retail outlets and elsewhere

Okay. That's about counterfeiting, which is trademark infringement. Check.

From counterfeit pharmaceuticals and electronics to pirated movies, music and software, IP thieves undermine the U.S. economy and jeopardize public safety.

Well, there's a variety of different things there, and the claims that counterfeit movies, music and software jeopardize public safety has been shown nowhere, but it's nice to see Morton lump them all together. The only area where there is a potential risk for safety is with counterfeit fake drugs, but Morton and ICE never seem to distinguish between grey market generic pills that are perfectly safe and helpful and actual fake drugs. Because, you know, that would show how small this issue really is.

American jobs are being lost, American innovation is being diluted and the public health and safety of Americans is at risk -- and organized criminal enterprises are profiting from their increasing involvement in IP theft.

Almost nothing in the statement above can be supported by actual evidence. The claims of job losses have been debunked. The public safety issues are extremely limited to very specific cases, though Morton pretends it applies to everything he's talking about, and outside of a very small set of trademark infringement, the claims of organized crime profiting from this stuff has also been totally debunked (the recent SSRC report had a nice section debunking this -- and yet Morton still claims it's true). He's pushing past strawmen into lying.

From there he goes on to talk about the importance of enforcement (i.e, play up his own role), but really focuses mainly on copyright issues, which again, applies to almost none of what he set up in the intro to his speech. It's the worst kind of strawman conflation out there. Morton goes on to highlight various enforcement efforts, including praising the domain seizues, insisting there's no due process problems with taking down non-infringing speech with no notice to website owners, because they're free to protest later through the courts. Basically, it's the same strawman speech he's given before, which responds to none of the serious questions raised by the massive technical and legal errors made by the staff working for him.

Those were the two key speeches that were problematic. GoDaddy also gave a presentation (pdf), which is basically all about how it is quick to respond to law enforcement and claims of illegal activity and suspended 150,000 websites last year. Odd that there don't appear to be concerns that it may have done so overzealously, as is often accused. However, GoDaddy does point out that it has some concerns about COICA, and specifically with the DNS filtering aspects of it. And, finally, as already mentioned, Google explained why it's not the enemy (pdf) but that wasn't what the committee wanted to hear. All four speeches are embedded below.

Filed Under: coica, congress, copyright, floyd abrams, infringement, john morton, sites
Companies: godaddy, google

GoDaddy Sued For $100 Million Because A Website Put Up Copyrighted Photos Of Michael Jackson?

from the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept

Honestly, if I wanted to make up this sort of stuff, I couldn't. Apparently domain registrar GoDaddy has been sued for $100 million by a guy who claims to hold the copyright on some photos of Michael Jackson, which appeared on a website with the domain MichaelJacksonCasino.com. Now, I could see a right of publicity argument from the Michael Jackson estate, and maybe there's even a copyright lawsuit for the copyright holder... but they would be against whoever created the website, not GoDaddy. In this lawsuit, I would imagine GoDaddy's lawyers will quickly point out the pertinent DMCA safe harbors and that will be that.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, michael jackson, safe harbors
Companies: godaddy

The Oscars vs. GoDaddy

from the ah-loopholes dept

The Motion Picture Academy is somewhat infamous for its over-aggressive IP claims around the "Oscar" awards. It's even sued a blog that was helping to promote the event. Apparently, just suing one website wasn't enough, so back in May it sued domain registrar GoDaddy for allowing a bunch of domains to be registered.

Now, in a reasonable world, where liability is properly applied, GoDaddy would never be liable for actions of its users. But, unfortunately, one of the very few areas that DMCA and Section 230 safeharbors do not cover is trademark law. So, the Academy may actually be able to get away with blaming GoDaddy for not magically blocking anyone from registering any domain that might, possibly, maybe be about the Oscar Awards:

Suing under the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, the Academy disputes more than a 100 domain names, including 2011oscars.com, academyawardz.com, jaylenososcars.com, betacademyawards.com, oscarsunplugged.com, oscarshotels.com, oscarstravel.com, oscarsliveblogging.com ... etc. Damages could total as much as $10 million.

On top of the basics of blaming GoDaddy for allowing such domains to be registered, the Academy seems to directly be taking issue with the fact that GoDaddy has a system for letting domain holders "park" those domains and make money from ads. The Academy tries to spin this as GoDaddy purposely "profiting" off of its intellectual property, but that's ridiculous. GoDaddy is just offering a general domain parking ad system. It's making money off of any parked domains. It has nothing to do with their intellectual property. And, frankly, if these domains were really so valuable to the Academy, why didn't they register them in the first place?

To make the whole thing even more ridiculous, the Academy claims that a GoDaddy patent application shows that it knows that it needs to filter out ads on certain types of domains. But just because you develop a system to do so, it doesn't mean you are legally required to abide by it.

The whole thing is, frankly, absurd. If the Academy has a problem with certain domains, it should go after those who actually registered them. Not the registrar. If this lawsuit actually gets anywhere, it could create a real chill for registrars, who will then feel the need to review and block certain registrations, even if they would be perfectly legal.

Filed Under: oscars, registration, third party liability, trademark
Companies: godaddy, motion picture academy

GoDaddy Stops Offering Chinese Domains

from the taking-a-stand dept

It seems that with Google now taking a stand on Chinese policies, other companies are at least stepping up a bit as well. GoDaddy, who I believe is the largest domain registrar around, is going to stop offering .cn domains, after China put in place new rules, requiring registering with the government and providing all sorts of personal info, including a photograph and identity cards. GoDaddy says it sees these new rules as a "threat to the security of individuals," though it almost certainly has noticed the good publicity Google has received for its stance, combined with the political winds suggesting new laws to punish American companies that help censorship abroad.

Filed Under: china, domain names
Companies: godaddy

Eolas Is Baaaaaaaaack; And It's Suing Everyone Over Embeddable Web Widgets

from the because-otherwise... dept

Well, here we go again. As you may recall, Eolas is a company that claimed to hold a patent (5,838,906) on browser plugins. The company sued Microsoft, and a long drawn-out battle ensued. Even though web inventor Tim Berners-Lee presented prior art and asked the USPTO to invalidate Eolas' ridiculously broad and obvious patent, the USPTO eventually upheld the patent (after initially rejecting claims). Even as Microsoft began presenting evidence that it actually had made use of the technology in question before Eolas applied for its patent, losses in the courts and the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case eventually resulted in Microsoft agreeing to settle rather than continue to fight.

Since then (two years ago), plenty of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, concerning Eolas' plans to sue others. Now we know why it waited. It's now received a new patent -- a continuation patent, which is often used to abuse the patent system by putting forth a broad patent, then filing for continuations to make changes that let an earlier "invention" cover technologies that later become popular. In this case, the new patent (7,599,985), which basically just extends the earlier patent on browser plugins, and extends it to javascript widgets. Yes, those embeddable widgets used all over the web? It appears that Eolas thinks that those are infringing and everyone should pay up.

The new lawsuit has been filed against Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube. Apparently, starting small isn't part of the plan. Not surprisingly, Eolas filed in Eastern Texas using McKool Smith -- one of the most popular law firms representing patent holding firms in East Texas.

I am honestly curious how patent system defenders, who are also programmers, can defend this. I'm sure non-programmers will claim that the patent is valid, but I can't imagine how anyone who has any knowledge of basic programming principles can claim that such a patent is valid. In the meantime, tons of companies doing an incredibly basic thing on the web will now have to waste millions of dollars fighting a ridiculous patent lawsuit. How is this promoting innovation in any way shape or form?

Filed Under: browsers, embeddable, patents, plugins, widgets
Companies: adobe, amazon, apple, blockbuster, citigroup, ebay, eolas, frito-lay, godaddy, google, j.c. peney, jpmorgan chase, microsoft, office depo, perot systems, playboy, stabples, sun, texas instruments, yahoo, youtube

Twitter, WordPress, Ning & GoDaddy All Sued In Mistargeted Lawsuit Over Defamation

from the someone-please-learn-section-230 dept

Last week, a lawsuit involving an allegedly defamatory Twitter message about a landlord made the news. This week, we've got another defamation suit involving another Twitter message and a condo building, but the situation here is quite different. First, if the alleged facts are true, it does sound like it could be defamation. It involves some condo owners, and who used Twitter, blogs and other websites to apparently accuse the condo board president of a variety of things including "murder, bribery, extortion, illicit payoffs, and corruption." Assuming those things are untrue, it would appear that the guy targeted by all this, Daniel Neiditch, has a decent defamation claim.

However, rather than just sue those folks responsible for the message, Neiditch's lawyers appear to have sued pretty much every company that these messages could loosely be associated with, including Twitter, WordPress, Ning, and GoDaddy. As Sam Bayard notes in the link, it appears that Neiditch's lawyers appear not to know about Section 230 of the CDA. That's a pretty big one for your lawyers to miss when filing a lawsuit like this. Ultimately, all four of those companies should have the case easily dismissed under Section 230, but it will be a waste of time and money in the meantime.

Of course, even if they were totally unaware of Section 230, basic common sense should tell you that these sites, hosting the content (or the domain, in the case of GoDaddy) should never be responsible for what was written on those sites. Going after them as a part of the lawsuit appears to be a blatant money grab, by trying to tie any company to the lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous the connection is between the actual action and the company. There really ought to be sanctions against lawyers who do such things, because it happens way too often.

Filed Under: dafamation, section 230
Companies: godaddy, ning, twitter, wordpress

Why Would Selling Equity In A Domain Name Deserve A Patent?

from the isn't-selling-equity-selling-equity? dept

Brad Feld, one of the increasing number of VCs who's grown skeptical of the value of patents (software patents in particular) alerts us that domain registrar GoDaddy has apparently applied for a patent on selling shares of equity in a domain name. You can see the application itself, which only has six claims and seems pretty straightforward. It's only an application, so there's still a decent chance this gets rejected -- but the very fact that anyone even thought it was worth applying for such a patent is quite telling. It's difficult to see what is new or unique about what's in the patent, other than it applies the standard process of selling equity in anything to a domain name.

Filed Under: brad feld, domain names, equity, patent, patent application
Companies: godaddy