Categories
politics socialmedia

Still opposing SOPA and PIPA

We’re not going “Dark” here to protest SOPA. Instead, I’m leaving this post on the front of the site to give you links to some important places where you can take action. Please do take action, specifically, go to http://americancensorship.org/ and send a note to your Senator or Congressman.

A truly great summary of the SOPA issue from CopyBlogger.

C|Net’s SOPA FAQ

Inc. Magazine’s Stand on SOPA.

SOPA Protest image

Categories
Random Thoughts socialmedia

Opposing SOPA, Still Leaving GoDaddy

I haven’t blogged here in a while, but I felt compelled to do so recently by the controversy regarding the SOPA act in Congress.

Why is the bill so bad? You can read how the SOPA Bill violates the Constitution by creating blacklists and opposing free speech. Since the bill also allows sites to be shut down without an adversary proceeding (a court or administrative hearing) it effectively allows anything to be shut down first, with questions asked later (if the party can afford it.)

From a small business perspective,  a company could have their site on a server that is a “shared” server. If one of the other tennets has an infringing site, the entire server could be shut down, and you’d be collateral damage. I can’t support that in any case.

By creating this bill, our government would have the power we criticize in the “Great Firewall of China” and other oppressive regimes. Hey, remember when Pakistan blocked Youtube and YouTube became unreachable for almost all of the Internet? (The link documents that happened in 2008. Whoops, we just took down your company. Sorry.) That is the kind of thing we’re talking about here – and new measures are being created so governments and groups can’t do this intentionally or by accident. If this kind of power is legislated, it will leave technical holes in the Internet where all sorts of abuse can happen. Don’t take it from me, read the “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf’s position on SOPA.

I mean, if the right-wing Heritage Foundation can oppose SOPA at the same time the lefty EFF opposes SOPA, there is something seriously wrong with the bill.

Even though GoDaddy allegedly no longer supports SOPA, their support before they chose to change is enough to make me question working with this company going forward. That, and the fact they use women as sex objects to sell their services. As a father of a daughter, I’m voting with my feet and my wallet against this practice. I will be doing more as soon as I make sure I know where all the DNS entries go so I don’t mess up this blog, my email and other business-critical things. There are a bunch of different registrars who will take your business, and Lifehacker has a great piece on ditching GoDaddy.

So, goodbye GoDaddy. I’ve just started to transfer away 17 domains, more are coming.

SOPA and the Senate’s equivalent are bad laws.  I’ll stress again that I’m for businesses being able to protect their intellectual property, as long as they find methods that don’t break the Internet in doing this.

Categories
events socialmedia

Participating in an HP event – with contest for you

Over on Harbrooke.com I’ve given details of an HP Printing live event for Monday (post goes live Monday morning), 9/20/20 where I’ll be participating as a subject matter expert in a conversation about printing.*

The event will be live streamed on Monday around 10:15 AM Eastern, and you can submit questions and comments from the comfort of your keyboard. I’ll provide the email address for submissions soon.

Please check it out, as there’s a contest and a few people will win printers! Free Printers! (Please read the rules).

*This is a sponsored conversation – I am compensated for my time and expertise.

Categories
social media socialmedia socialmediaclub

Thrilled to Participate in the Social Media Clubhouse at SXSW

I’m excited to be part of Social Media Club‘s Social Media Clubhouse #3, in Austin this week and next, for SouthBy Southwest Interactive and Music. Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, and the SMC team have been working really hard to get the house sponsored, set up, and ready for the rest of us to arrive, and I give them a huge amount of credit for planning it.

As a board member of Social Media Club, and of the original team behind the group, we always envisioned being able to bring together professionals form important discussions. This is part of what we are chartered to do – “2. Share lessons among practitioners.” At the Social Media Clubhouse, we’ll have summits on Co-Working, Engagement, and the Synaptic Web.

I hope you’ll follow us via our #smch3 hashtag, our Twitter list (forthcoming) and our site. And, if you’ll be Austin, please get in touch – I’d love to meet or catch up with you.

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Categories
For Class social media social networks socialmedia

Buzz Off

This week, Google released its new Social aggregation service (I don’t think that it is a networking service) called Buzz. Jason Calacanis thinks Buzz just ate Facebook’s lunch. I disagree.
Buzz requires connections with people through my personal Gmail account. Unlike Facebook, where I can “unfriend” anyone, and hide them when I don’t want to communicate, tying this account to my personal email means that I have to give out that email to connect with someone. Even though I can block them or stop following them if they’re suddenly undesirable, they still have my email, and can abuse it, publish it, pass it to spammers, etc.
I think this is somewhat shortsighted. Of course, Google wants to drive adoption of Gmail and its’ other services. However, with Wave they created GoogleWave.com addresses, and still pulled in Gmail “buddies.” They could have and should have done the same.
Next, the requirement that I be logged into Gmail to see my Buzz stuff is not appealing. I have many email accounts, and still use various desktop clients to manage them. Call me a luddite, but I have no intention of using Gmail full time, so Buzz is going to be an interrupt – driven activity – I’m already getting emails on Buzz threads where I’ve commented and already contemplating how I’m going to filter them.
Jason, this is not the second coming of Facebook. Buzz is a lot like FriendFeed, which I also don’t use because it is cluttered and takes too much effort for me to organize. I see it as way too geeky. When my brothers and sisters are on Buzz, we’ll talk.

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