First SOPA/PIPA, now Komen. We're on to something here, folks!

[hedgehog]

[Cooley Hurd]

1. As much as I mock it, social media is really making an impact - for the better!

[jwirr]

3. It works in election years. I am not so sure it is that effective in off years. I may be wrong.

[Kber]

5. Social Media is evolving so fast, that it's hard to say.

[randome]

11. We are in uncharted territory.

[DonCoquixote]

2. K and R

There is a whole school of thought that says sopcial media is useless..when it alone has gotten us whatever crumbs we have gotten.

[KansDem]

4. It happens with CorpMedia cannot contain the flood of progressive ideas!

Like when the New York Times a week ago yesterday published a letter written by 16 climate-change denying "scientists" while ignoring a letter of concern about human-driven climate change written by 255 scientists of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/scientists-challenging-climate-science-appear-to-flunk-climate-economics/

People have had enough of this nonsense. The time is coming when CorpMedia simply cannot lie for the Corporations and Power Elite any more!

[Ms. Toad]

6. Not quite so fast...

There's a lot of talk about corporate personhood being bad - and SOPA/PIPA was primarily motivated by corporations exerting free speech rights. (Yes, there was a major response by people to the actions taken by the corporations, but both SOPA and PIPA were around long before the corporate blackouts and barely noticed.)

So - are we only against corporate personhood when they speak with a voice we don't like? What about when they use their money to motivate our voices?

http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=14608

UCLA Law School professor Eugene Volokh challenges the idea that people who like today's "blackout" protests by Internet companies can also dislike the now-lowered limits on corporate speech thanks to the Citizens United decision:

Today, Google’s U.S. query page features an anti-Stop-Online-Piracy-Act statement from Google. Say that Congress concludes that it’s unfair for Google to be able to speak so broadly, in a way that ordinary Americans (including ordinary Congressmen) generally can’t. Congress therefore enacts a statute banning all corporations from spending their money — and therefore banning them from speaking — in support of or opposition to any statute. What would you say about such a statute? Again, I limit the question to those who think corporations generally lack First Amendment rights.

Per the Wall Street Journal, ComScore estimates 10 million people will feel the effects of the Wikipedia blackout today. Everyone who visits Google Search's homepage, everyone who tries to go to Reddit during the 12-hour period from 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. EST, everyone who visits any of a number of other high-volume sites will also get the message. In terms of scale and scope for a single political message, this is, at the least, very rare. Are the rules different in a case like this? And should they be?

[hedgehog]

7. People saw the message at high traffic sites, true,

but they responded not because it was Google or Wiki asking, but because they agreed with what Google and Wiki were saying.

[Ms. Toad]

8. It isn't just that they saw the message at high traffic sites

it is that the message spoken and the sites themselves are the same voices we are trying to silence in response to the Supreme Court decision which allows them to be used in the political process. If they had remained silent, there would not have been any popular response and SOPA/PIPA would be much closer to law, now.

SOPA/PIPA had been heading toward becoming law, in one form or another, since 2008 and have been talked about among internet users for quite a while. Very few cared enough about it to do anything, until the blackout.

I'm not saying the Supreme Court was right - just pointing out that SOPA/PIPA is very different than what happened with SGK = and there may be some hidden (and, as in this instance, perhaps undesired) consequences in requiring corporate voices to stay out of politics.

[2ndAmForComputers]

10. "voices we are trying to silence"

Bullcrap.

These business were exactly as free to do as they did in 2005, 2000, 1990 and 1950. (If the Internet existed back then.)

[Ms. Toad]

17. Not quite sure what you think is bullcrap.

Businesses are actually freer after Citizens United But how free they are isn't really related to anything I said.

Generally, folks on DU thinks businesses corporations should not be engaged in influence pedaling in elections and legislation (regardless of what they did in 2005, 2000, 1990 and 1950).

The OP was touting the SOPA/PIPA action as our power acting through social media.

I've been listening to non-corporate chatter for several months - no one was organized/ing any mass social media action. The large "grassroots" response was triggered by concerted business efforts engaging in a blackout, which directly impacted us - and we finally got off our collective butts.

I didn't hear anyone cry "foul" about the blackout. I suspect if the movie theaters and licensing entities imposed a one day license black-out (meaning no music or movies for a day) in order to support SOPA/PIPA our response would have been anger (not terribly productive for their cause . . . which is why it would not have been a good tactic for the other side). But my point is that, at least in some sense, we were just pawns in a battle between competing corporate interests.

[2ndAmForComputers]

20. The SOPA/PIPA blackout did NOT depend on Citizens United to happen.

It could have happened just as easily in 1997.

That's what I meant.

[Ms. Toad]

23. I wasn't implying it did.

Just that there is a heightened awareness of corporate influence over elections and legislation which has a lot of liberal/progressive people calling for corporations to be banned from such activity (and the bans I've heard called for are broader than just reversing Citizens United).

It is just interesting to see people being thrilled about the results of the kind of activities which many are suggesting is problematic.

[2ndAmForComputers]

25. You implied a relation between corporate personhood and the blackout.

So how a lack of corporate personhood, the way us dirty hippie libruls would like, would prevent those company's anti-SOPA/PIPA campaign while leaving the OTHER companies (media etc.) free top work FOR SOPA/PIPA?

It does not follow.

[Ms. Toad]

26. I implied a relastionship between the recent decision

and people's heightened interest shutting corporate voices from the political process.

Things tend to just trundle along with just a few voices pointing out concerns until there is something to bring the attention to general public notice. That something in this case was Citizens United. Following that case there were quite a few more people interested in shutting corporations out of the political process - at all levels (lobbyists, issue advocacy, candidate advocacy, etc.) not just the specific ways addressed in the case.

On a parallel track, SOPA/PIPA were moving pretty quietly through congress, with just a few voices pointing out concerns. On the corporate level, SOPA/PIPA mostly pitted old media (film and recording groups) against newer media (facebook, google, twitter, wikipedia, etc.). The latter decided to use its corporate voice (money/bully pulpit) to motivate us to action by staging a black-out. (The black-out is not so different from the way issue ads motivate us to vote for/against a particular candidate.) We seemed to like them using their voices to influence this policy (but also seem reluctant to admit that is what happened).

It just raises the question for me about whether we really object to corporate involvement in policy making/politics - or we only object when it acts against what we perceive as our interests. I'm not advocating one direction or the other - just raising what (to me) is an obvious question: If we really want them out of politics, then why are we cheering, rather than being upset about, the blackout?

[2ndAmForComputers]

27. If corporations stayed out of politics, there wouldn't be a NEED for a blackout!

Because Big Media wouldn't be in the process of buying anti-freedom legislation for their benefit!

Geez. You sound like the principal who never punishes a bully but punishes the nerd when he reacts.

[Ms. Toad]

28. You're missing the point.

SOPA/PIPA was a battle between corporate interests. Google is just as much a corporation as RIAA, or Disney, or any of the corporations on the opposite side of SOPA/PIPA. .

This battle was between new media and old - not between people and corporations.

We happen to like the goals of one side better than the other - but it is dangerous territory to support tactics we generally oppose (corporate involvement in politics) because we like the outcome one group of corporations is promoting.

[2ndAmForComputers]

29. "We happen to like the goals of one side better than the other"

Yeah, being for or against SOPA/PIPA is like fashion tastes.

What is YOUR opinion about SOPA/PIPA?

[Ms. Toad]

30. I wasn't discussing the goal - but the tool used to get there.

I see corporate speech the same way I do signing statements. If signing statements are an inappropriate tool, they are an inappropriate tool regardless of whether they are used to "permit" torture or limit the use of anti-terrorism against U.S. citizens. If corporate speech is an inappropriate tool, it is inappropriate both to buy the enactment of SOPA/PIPA and to motivate outrage against SOPA/PIPA.

As for my opinion about SOPA/PIPA - they used a tank to kill a wild coyote.

Among other things, I am a photographer and digital research artist. I create work protected by copyright. There is a significant problem with copyright infringement and the internet. A lot of the digital retouching I do takes hours, but can be copied without my consent and transmitted millions of times in the blink of an eye. As an owner of material protected by copyright it is getting harder and harder to enforce those rights because of (1) a lot of misunderstanding about what is protected by copyright - resulting in a lot of people engaging in infringement that they do not understand is infringement (2) the ease of copying things over the internet, and (3) deliberate theft by people who believe "information should be fee" regardless of the law. Protecting my work has been made harder by bad legal interpretations of the DMCA which have made it harder for copyright owners to keep material from being widely disseminated before it is too late for damage control, by hidden domain owners, and by the increasing use of/resistance by foreign domains to cooperate with take-down notices.

But SOPA/PIPA went way overboard. I personally experienced the chilling effect of the acts, even though they did not go into effect, when I uploaded a slide show set to music on facebook. The images were my own, and the music was licensed by all owners of the right to the music, for use with my slide show on websites. Facebook yanked it down, alleged I was engaging in copyright infringement, and threatened to disable my ability to upload videos. I filed a counternotice, they restored it, took it down again, another notice, another counternotice, back up again, back down again, and it has remained down for about a week now - and there is no meaningful way to communicate with them about the rights I have, short of legal action.

Facebook has started the kind of proactive review process that is not required for entities like facebook (and DU) under the DMCA, but would likely be necessary under SOPA/PIPA. Because of the quantity of material involved, they are removing even fully licensed use of materials protected by copyright - as near as I can tell from other complaints - based on anything musical in a video (You-Tube uses a pattern recognition, but Facebook appears to be more indiscriminate).

I don't know where the balance is, because there is a real problem of copyright infringement - but SOPA/PIPA went way too far.

[randome]

12. You raise some interesting points.

But if corporations across the board were prohibited from interfering in the political process, we would have a more level playing field.

Still, you're right, sometimes corporations step up to do the right thing.

[Ms. Toad]

16. A friend of mine posted that article on his FB wall.

So I can't take credit for the thought (or even finding the article) - but once I read it, it has made for some interesting mental musings on the subject, since one of the organizations I donate to regularly is heavily involved in limiting corporate influence in politics.

In this case, it appears to be the new corporate media v. old corporate media. Most of us using the internet heavily tend to find ourselves more aligned with the new corporate media, so we liked the blackout.

[2ndAmForComputers]

9. Corporate personhood was not in any way necessary for the blackouts.

[Ms. Toad]

14. But it was corporate voices which are responsible for them.

Not a grassroots movement. The grassroots action in this case was a response to corporations we happened to agree with telling us what to think, to put it bluntly. Until they shut off their services, we didn't really care.

I am not arguing for corporate personhood, by the way. I am just pointing out the irony of claiming credit for what was, essentially, a bunch of corporations using us to make their point to congress, while at the same time working to get corporate money out of politics.

[hedgehog]

18. Or was it that the corporate voices gave

us a method of attack.


We knew that Komen's weak point was money, so we could all act spontaneously.

If I may make a comparison - American Catholics have been fighting with the hierarchy for years. The only weapon we have is money. Until we get together and make our money talk, we will be ignored.

[Ms. Toad]

19. I work in an area that makes me aware of SOPA/PIPA

So I had spent a fair amount of time listening to the chatter. There was a very small portion of the population who had even heard of SOPA/PIPA before sometime in early January.

With respect SOPA/PIPA, both would have passed without any significant popular opposition prior to the blackout. PIPA had already passed out of committee and had enough bipartisan co-sponsors that it was pretty much guaranteed to pass - and virtually no one outside of the IP and, to a lesser extent, dedicated web activist communities was even aware what was in the works.

[silverweb]

13. I think that's missing the point.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]The main objection to Citizens United is that corporations can secretly spend unlimited amounts of money in election campaigns, directly for or against specific candidates and not just on issues.

There's a very big difference between objecting to that and "trying to silence" them.

[Ms. Toad]

15. I think you are limiting a general feeling that corporations should be out of politics

to the specific holding of the case. Most people in the circles I run in want corporations out of the business of buying politicians and laws. Permitting secret unlimited donations is certainly bad, but not the only thing they object to.

[underpants]

21. WE (liberal bloggers) also got Trent Loyt out of the Senate leadership

but we can't talk about that because the follower nation might think it is "a thing to do"

[TBF]

22. I credit OWS for this -

they might not accomplish as much as we like (we'll need serious labor action to do more), but they sure have sparked folks to think about resisting. For that I give them full credit.

[woo me with science]

24. Hear, hear!

Continue to exert pressure re: ACTA and the internet ID.