So, who else in on that list of SOPA lovers anyway?
Short back history for those of you who have been living under a rock or all your time on Facebook. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, and on the surface sounds like a really noble thing, except that this is a corporate funded Congress that is trying to push it through; which should be the first warning that this isn’t going to play out nice.
Now anyone who has been pay attention to the whole SOPA thing, and not spending their life on Facebook, will be able to tell you just how bad this SOPA thing really is for the web, the users, and – well the Internet as a whole.
It’s one thing to know all the usual players that have come out against it, and it is a list that is growing daily, but what is more interesting is knowing which companies, beyond the usual players, are rooting for this killer to pass through Congress and into law.
Earlier today it came out that GoDaddy, the biggest domain registar and web hosting company in the world, was supporting SOPA and the went went nuts, and rightly so. From Reddit to heavy hitting web property owners like Ben Huh (think LOLcats) and from powerful angel investors like Paul Graham – YCombinator – to influential bloggers the voice against SOPA; and those that support it, is getting louder and louder.
So who are some of these companies that are supporting SOPA?
Well VentureBeat had a post out this morning with a list of a 142 companies from the Judiciary Committee responsible for SOPA and this was followed up later with a post from Techdirt where they had the link to the list of 439 companies that was collected by Andrew Couts.
Here’s some of the gems from those two lists.
- American Federation of Musicians (AFM) – no surprise there
- American Federation of Television and Radio Artists – again no surprise
- Capitol Records Nashville
- CBS
- Christian Music Trade Association
- Comcast/NBCUniversal – totally expected
- Council of Better Business Bureaus
- Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc
- Go Daddy
- L’Oreal – huh? why?
- Major League Baseball
- MasterCard Worldwide
- National Football League
- News Corporation
- Time Warner
- 3M Company
- Adidas America
- Marvel Entertainment, LLC
- Monster Cable Products, Inc
- Nervous Tattoo Inc., dba Ed Hardy
- Nike, Inc.
- Oakley, Inc
- Dolby Laboratories, Inc
- Electronic Arts, Inc
- Ford Motor Company
- Wal-Mart
- Xerox Corporation
That is just a drop in the bucket of the companies and individuals that support taking your Internet away from you, or do their best to totally destroy it. If you want a full run down of who supports SOPA check the links above but in the meantime – how many of those companies to you support with your wallet?
You might want to think about it and maybe like Ben Huh find other companies to spend your money with. Let them know you aren’t happy with them and their support of SOPA.
