Whoa! What a Difference a #BlackoutSOPA Day Makes.

Januar 24th, 2012 • Politics
Tags: Change, Cool, PIPA, Politics, SOPA, USA

Just to make sure nobody ever ever ever asks the question again ‘What we can do against something like SOPA?’ or if it makes sense at all to protest. It does. Check out the results from Blackout SOPA Day last week on Jan 18.

Thanks to Buzzhunt

SOPA. Let’s Talk About the Brands Supporting It.

Januar 4th, 2012 • 1 comment Allgemein, Censorship
Tags: Censorship, Ethics, legal, poltics, SOPA, USA

Chances are high you have heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act aka SOPA, particularly if you are reading this Blog regularly. SOPA is a bill that some consider as the single biggest threat to the freedom of the web right now. Others just call it: This horrible thing in Congress.

Allegedly designed to help copyright owners protect their intellectual property (who wants to fight that, hmm?) SOPA gives the US government the power to ‘turn off’ future Wikileaks Occupy Wallstreet Pirate Bay pretty much anything it does not like.

SOPA is legalized censorship. It’s a direct reaction to the US inability to deal with Wikileaks, dressed up as a tool to protect intellectual properties. What makes it even more embarrassing for the US: It is a tool that is so fundamentally anti-democratic that you should start getting really concernced…if you weren’t already.

Let’s remember Foreign Secretary Clinton comments on China’s Great Firewall in 2010 where she stated the US would start “supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their right of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship”. It would be almost funny if it wasn’t so sad.

How to stop SOPA
SOPA may become official part of the US jurisdiction in 2012. But it would also have worldwide impact because it gives the US government the power to shut down parts of the web – no matter where.
In order to save our web as the free place that it is, we have to act now. I understand that SOPA sounds like the cryptic web stuff that usually only affects the Nerd elite. Only this time is different. SOPA would change the web fundamentally. And this means everyone is affected.

As the bill currently makes its path through the legislative process in Washington D.C. it needs support/ers. Call it Lobbyism. But the American Political system expects certain signs of support for a new bill. Helpful are the 1% companies spending money on presidential candidatesbig corporate tax payers publicly supporting a bill.

One of these companies was GoDaddy – the world’s largest domain register that has had direct involvement in shaping legislation. And you probably know that GoDaddy had a bit of a challenging last fortnight in 2011:

Go Daddy was ‘targeted by online activists in response to its enthusiasm for a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright bills, has finally denounced the legislation in response to a boycott scheduled for today. (…)

The idea of boycotting GoDaddy began with a protest thread on Reddit and was aided by Jimmy Wales’ announcement last week that “Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy.” It inspired GoDaddyBoycott.org, which urged Internet users and companies to “boycott GoDaddy until they send a letter to Congress taking back any and all support of the House and Senate versions of the Internet censorship bill, both SOPA and PIPA.” (CNET)

GoDaddy may have lost between 37,000 up to 1 million domains in December when hacktivists announced LeaveGoDaddyDay for Dec 29th 2011. This is great. Deafeating the GoDaddy scumbags is a big win for the web’s civil society. But seriously: It was rather easy. Godaddy is a company that is embedded in the web community and which depends on it. It wasn’t really smart of them to underestimate the wrath of their own customers. But GoDaddy is not one of the major consumer packaged good companies or entertainment brands that stand behind SOPA. And we should take the anger of the web’s civil societies to these brands. The cool hipster lifestyle brands that support an immoral and cynical tool of censorship.

Let’s talk about L’Oreal. Let’s talk about Apple.
Right at the moment SOPA is supported by an awful lot of major companies (as mentioned: who would want to fight Piracy, hmmm?). As usual Wikipedia knows (which potentially would have to go out of business because of SOPA) more.

The legislation has broad support from organizations that rely on copyright, including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, Macmillan Publishers, Viacom, and various other companies and unions in the cable, movie, and music industries. Supporters also include trademark-dependent companies such as Nike, L’Oréal, and Acushnet Company.

Nike? L’Oréal? Yes. SOPA is supported by some of your favorite brands. While some of the Swooshs or ‘Crazy ones’ may not be explicitly listed as individual supporters on this list, they may well be organized in one of the many lobbying foundations supporting the bill. And that makes it quite complicated.

Example? Two days ago Nintendo, Sony Electronics, and EA Games pretended to drop SOPA support (at least if you ask their PR agencies). Geekosystem clarifies:

Sony, for instance, their music and video companies still remain firmly on the SOPA support list. Only the game-making division, Sony Electronics, pulled its name. For Nintendo and EA, while their names are gone from the list, they are still members of the Entertainment Software Association, which is also still on the list. Sony is also a member of the ESA.

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Kill SOPA. A Week to Take Action Against Censorship.

Dezember 15th, 2011 • Censorship
Tags: Censorship, Ethics, legal, poltics, SOPA, USA

SOPA and Protect IP certainly are two of the biggest threats for the free web right now. As mentioned in an earlier article this new bill would give U.S. authorities the right to block websites, to cut off funding, and to even remove content. It is essentially a law that allows U.S. authorities to conduct global censorship.

After a couple of revisions have been made there will be a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee today. For the sake of the free web: it is absolutely crucial to be as loud as possible in regards to SOPA. Even more so if you are U.S. citizen. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called this week “Stand Up and Fight – A Week to Take Action Against Censorship” – offering an anti-SOPA toolkit and an overview of what citizens can do if they want to speak out against SOPA.

Act now. Otherwise 2012 could look like this:

SOPA. The single biggest threat for the web right now.

November 24th, 2011 • Politics
Tags: Censorship, Politics, SOPA, USA, World

Just in case you are not aware of it (and if you are not American there is quite a good chance you are not aware of it): The internet is currently facing one of its gravest threats ever. It is called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) / Protect IP (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011).

For some it is just the last pathetic act in the entertainment industry’s losing battle against the web. For others these two proposed laws will become very helpful tools to stop the ones from communicating who shouldn’t organize themselves anyway.

SOPA/Protect-IP arecurrently pushed through the U.S. Congress and the House. As usual supported with the firepower of major lobby organizations. And in a couple of months the U.S. government will – in fact – have the power to selectively censor the web if everything goes according to plan.

The following video explains SOPA/Protect-IP a bit better than I do.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Does this affect me as a non-American? Of course it does. With SOPA the U.S. entertainment industy wins an important battle against free speech bringing all of us one state closer to censorship, walled gardens and the dystopian vision of a controllable internet. A vision that western Elites share with Colonel Gaddafi, Kim Jong Il and the Chinese government.

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Social Activation. An Overview about U.S. Grocery Chains.

Juli 8th, 2010 • 1 comment Brands, Business, Social
Tags: Brands, Business, Diagram, Facebook, Groceries, Social Media, Twitter, US, USA, visual

First up, I hate info visual wallpapers. They just seem to pop up everywhere and there is nothing which has not yet been transferred into an info visual of some sort. But there also are the good ones.

The following diagram by Pace Communications gives a good, brief overview about fans and followers of U.S. grocery chains. No doubt, this is quite a specialized market. Nevertheless you can spot the relevance of Facebook and Twitter (in comparison to Youtube and Flickr) for these major companies – with Walmart and Wholefood being frontrunners here. At least as long as you accept fans and followers as indicators of social activation.

Storytelling. A Day in New York and an Insight about Marketing.

März 16th, 2010 • 3 comments Ideas
Tags: Creativity, Funny, Germany, Ideas, NYC, Underway, USA, World

If you are a regular reader of my blog or if you follow me on twitter you might know that I spend this week in New York City. I am not working or attending a conference. I am just here on vacations, meeting friends and having a good time. While I spent the day exploring Manhattan (once again) I was run over by the same impressions that most foreigners are faced with when they return to the Big Apple for the first time in a while – it’s an inspirational overkill.

Of course, you cannot compare NYC to, let’s say, my hometown Frankfurt. But on the other hand – why not? Let’s just focus on something you can compare, even though both cities vary in size, culture and history drastically. Let’s just compare products and how they are presented. And when I thought about how NYC markets its goods I instantly found out what’s missing in Germany – heart and soul in selling products. That’s the result of 5 hours of just walking south from Greenwich to Chinatown.

Kiosk – 95 Spring Street, Soho

Kiosk is a highly unusual but very, very cool mixture of a folk museum and a cross-cultural retail-venture of everyday-items. Encounter helpful stuff in use in Portugese kitchens, Chinese kindergardens or German Scout Camps. Every item is presented with a short heritage about its sense, function and why it’s so special.
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