SOPA witchhunters: count me out

Glenn, there is a big difference between censoring and censuring. What Paul did was censure.

Also, Paul's justification for not allowing SOPA supporters to go to Demo day makes financial sense as the primary advisor to the YCombinator companies.

Demo Day is primarily an event for investors and others interesting in furthering the success of those companies in his portfolio. It's a high demand event, and in order for Paul to keep the best interest of his portfolio companies in mind should only invite those people who will add the most value.

Anyone supporting SOPA clearly is supporting an action that is at best not relevant to a company in his portfolio and at worst downright bad. This doest just apply to current YCombinator companies but all future companies.

This bill does nothing but does nothing but give old businesses that have ceased to innovate a stick with which they can beat the innovative companies with. If you are in the business of innovation, you'd censure such people too.

I challenge you to go get anything Paul has said on this matter (ref: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg ) and try to show that he is being a bully and not simply supporting and promoting the most rational economic decision as someone on the change/innovation side of the economy. The law should never be used to determine winners and losers. It should be there to protect the public while letting the markets decide who wins and loses.

This post smacks of taking the tone of articles written by journalists expressing the journalists' own viewpoints and extrapolating those viewpoints to be extensions of Paul's intent.

There is an interesting meta-discussion here, that ought to take place. Is this "bullying"? Whether or not it is, is it a good thing to do? Honestly, I'm not sure.

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An argument in one direction:

Say there is a bill before Congress that requires that I be shot. The manager of my grocery store announces that he supports it. I announce that I am no longer shopping at that grocery store. Am I being a bully? Is the situation with SOPA really qualitatively different?

If you think that's a bit over-the-top, then tone it down a bit. The same argument can be made, rather straightforwardly, using any number of different scenarios.

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In the other direction, it gets more subtle:

Law is complex. Pretty much everyone thinks there ought to be some copyright enforcement (e.g., if we don't enforce copyrights, then we don't enforce the GPL). Any enforcement is going to be detrimental to someone; we disagree on who that someone ought to be and what form the enforcement should take. Given that, do we really want to brand some company as "bad" because of one position on one bill, which, itself, is long and complicated, and hardly reducible to a bumper sticker?

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There is a school of thought that essentially says that no moral issue is resolvable, since we all have different ideas. I very much disagree with this school, and I don't like the fact that I might appear to be pushing it, above. But I honestly don't know how to respond to the ideas presented in the posting. I would welcome others' thoughts.

This article makes an argument that I've heard from other SOPA supporters today - if you don't want to work with us, don't have any alternatives and don't want to propose improvements, then we should proceed with SOPA.

Its such a ridiculous and counter-productive position to take, especially when its cloaked in the guise of bipartisan cooperation. No wonder the U.S. stands so divided with logic and rhetoric like this so freely played.

I see no reason to consider PG's actions to be anything akin to 'censorship' or 'bullying' when everyone involved is merely exercising their right to Freedom of Assembly. You may remember that as one of our other First Amendment rights.

  Freedom of Assembly

- The individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly

No one is forbidding them from making their positions known. No one is forcing them to recant those positions. No one forced them to take those positions in the first place. No one is preventing them from reconsidering their positions. And no one forced them to choose a side at all. SOPA, however, will take away websites, and with it the owner's ability to communicate with that audience, based on little more than someone's say-so, without giving them a chance to respond first.

People cannot expect to engage in activities like this that screw others over without there being consequences. That's not free speech, that's crazy talk.

There is a difference between ostracism and witch hunting.

The former is saying no more than "you are not welcome here" while the latter is more insidious.

Besides, it isn't witch "hunting" if the witches are putting out press releases saying "I'm a witch!"

So we should just quietly wait for them to come and "discuss" it with us?

> I just don’t like bullies.

It isn't bullying. It's tit-for-tat. Companies that support SOPA will hurt, economically, all of us. It makes sense to hurt them back.