Free speech has many exceptions. So no, you shouldn't be able to link to anything you want to. Just like free speech, there are many exceptions about what you can link to which are already illegal.
That's like saying I can't walk out of a public art gallery and go tell a friend there's a cool landscape portrait by a famous artist hanging on the 3rd floor. That's linking.
By definition, if it's on the internet, it's public facing and therefore publicly available knowledge. Linking is simply telling others, hey, look over here for publicly available information.
Now, if you link to something illegal or perverse, depending on content, that could result in interest from the authorities but that's because you, the user, made a personal decision to directly affiliate yourself with that content via a link. The mere act of linking to publicly available information, should not in and of itself, be illegal or prohibited.
Really? That's the best analogy you could come up with? It's more like a newspaper printing advertisements that there will be stolen radios for sale or prostitutes behind the Walmart on Saturday.
Poor analogy. Unless there are other mechanisms in place, a link doesn't serve an advertising purpose any more or less than a purely informational one. I would like for a newspaper engage in activities like exposing fences or street prostitution. I believe that's called "reporting."
I agree that GoDaddy should be given a break. Not because I like them, but because I hate internet mob bullying in general. They've been kicked to the ground by the baying mob, and have said they're sorry.
FWIW I've used them for SSL certs. I've had to call support a couple of times, and both times their support was outstanding... I mean surprisingly ridiculously good.
And we can choose to criticize them for that choice. Ain't free speech wonderful?
How about when your kid/elderly relative does a search on google and sees it?
If I believe my kid is too young to see that, I wouldn't let him search on Google by himself. As for an elderly relative, I'm pretty sure any of mine can cope with a picture of someone flipping them off.
Sure, Google can choose to do whatever they want, but those choices have consequences. This policy could have the effect of making people feel like they can't "be themselves" on G+, and cause a drop in participation. I'm not saying this particular incident would have that effect (MG Siegler appears to not actually care), but it could for other cases.
He killed it for sport, the rest is an excuse. If he were concerned about the community food supply he could have donated food. Anyone who hires "booth babes" for spokespeople and is a fan of 24 (a show I used to work for) hunts because he enjoys it. Bob Parsons does not spend thousands of dollars to kill elephants for humanitarian reasons.
Well I think you'd be hard pressed to find a hunter in the US that hunts only for the food gained. Maybe spending 70,000 dollars is sick, but I would hardly call those who hunt for "sport" sick. I myself have never hunted, but I imagine it satisfies some urge in those who do it.
Do you really think there were a bunch of villagers sitting in Africa, saying to themselves "our crops are being destroyed by this elephant, and we are so hungry—if only a rich American could fly halfway around the world to shoot an elephant for us?"
If you watched the original un-cut video, you would've seen the hungry villagers in Godaddy T-shirts and Caps skinning and chopping the elephant. That was disgusting. He thought of making it as a campaign, but when it backfired, they edited the video,
I don't think killing an elephant away from any village or crops proves that the elephant isn't a nuisance for that village, or that it routinely destroys the crops.
It also sounds reasonable that you can pay the local authorities in Zimbabwe to get the privilege to fulfill your own great white hunter dreams by shooting a problematic elephant.
I personally think how much of the video is spent justifying it is quite pathetic, and can also see how others might be offended by the great white hunter style.
They're cheap, they work, they're not going to go out of business....
Couldn't care less if their CEO likes hunting, or if they help the US government with its internet censorship agenda. Hate the US government for that, not random companies.
No. But I think people should make up their own minds.
The process of whipping up an internet hate mob with the aim of destroying <person>/<company> etc is one of the parts of the internet I detest the most. It's ugly bullying.
It rarely concerns itself with facts, just how big the internet hate mob can grow to and whether they can succeed at destroying their chosen enemy.
I personally think GoDaddy has brought this on themselves. They have made it extremely easy for people to hate them, and I would bet that in most cases, those that are now publicly hating them have privately hated them all along -- long before SOPA.
And then they only made things worse by flip flopping on their stance with a thinly veiled, half-hearted attempt to win customer support back.
I think that's the difference between GoDaddy and most of the other SOPA supporters -- this hate was there all along, this is just bringing it out of everyone.
So, despite the fact that GoDaddy helped write SOPA, never officially withdrew their support from SOPA, and even has special exemptions written into SOPA for themselves, it's a hate mob?
While GoDaddy is made up of complete schmucks I'd never do business with, and I believe all the hate is justified, it should be noted that there are no special exemptions for them in SOPA. The exemptions are for all registrars.
Yes. Regardless, protests like this never achieve anything apart from wasting peoples time.
If you don't like GoDaddy, or disagree with some of their policies, don't use them. It's the whipping people up into an internet hate mob unconcerned with any facts that I find distasteful.
Regardless, protests like this never achieve anything apart from wasting peoples times.
It's ironic you should say this. The type of people who think exactly this, is imo the reason nothing ever gets done as well. What I'm seeing is people doing something (voting with their wallet). As the saying goes All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
If you don't like GoDaddy, or disagree with some of their policies, don't use them. It's the whipping people up into an internet hate mob unconcerned with any facts that I find distasteful.
You may have a point. Many people don't take the time to check facts, they instead rely on the moral compass of their peers to take a direction. That's how the world usually works and it won't change tomorrow. However, in this case precisely, I fail to see which facts you'd like to bring to light, that would play in GoDaddy's favor, or how someone would take the time to move their domains without some prior understanding of why they're doing it. Also, what exactly qualifies this as a 'hate mob' rather than an angry mob?
I'm in no way affiliated or connected to GoDaddy. I don't have any domains registered with them. I dislike internet hate mobs, which as you say are designed to "teach them a lesson".
If I go out and do bad things, I go to jail, people will hate me / dislike me and wish that I stay in jail for a long time because I'm a criminal.
Why should people & companies who threaten important civil rights and liberties be treated differently? It's not OK to do crimes which affect 1-100 persons, but it's OK to affect the basic civil liberties & free speech of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions?
Any entity, a company or a number of individuals, which does something like this should suffer consequences. If it's a company, then it should really go away.
A company is responsible for its image. People don't owe them anything, so that the said company deserves the money of their clients. They must have a good image and keep their customers happy. Either they do that, or they should go out of business.
All in all, keeping customers happy means you must also uphold some moral values and protect civil liberties.
