Tag: Google

The Facebook Email Situation

Facebook released an arguably failed email system over a year  and a half ago. Code Name: Project Titan! What it ended up being is a unified messaging system for IM & Email like messaging, that can technically be used for email as well. From an email perspective, I don’t think it got mass adoption as the Gmail killer it was touted to be. So today they replaced the default email address to @facebook.com on all of their nearly 1 billion member profiles today. The tech media is screaming about it, but will the regular folks? Or will they react to it like “First Day On The Internet Kid Here?” Time will tell. But I think it sucks.

End Piracy, Not Liberty – Google (Plus my own rant)

This meme image of “Insanity Wolf” boils the SOPA debate down to its bare essentials. OF COURSE it’s a horrible idea to give media companies the option to legally block sites via DNS just because they say so. DNS is what makes the Internet work. Let’s not mess with that. The result of legislation against the open Internet will only create ever more underground activity known as darknets, and the media companies will never really kill piracy. They can only mitigate it. SOPA/PIPA is literally Pandora’s box for Internet freedom. The nuclear option if you will.

What happens when a company decides to invoke SOPA/PIPA on a technicality because of user created content on an up and coming competitor’s site? The door would be open for that to happen. We already have the digital millenium copyright act to protect copyright holders. But if media companies truly want people to stop pirating their content, they simply need to make it easier to get content online. Stop fighting Netflix at every turn. Put all your TV shows up on Hulu/Hulu Plus with no expiration dates, and no device blocking. Make your music available on Spotify, Rdio, Mog, Rhapsody, iTunes, Google, Amazon, etc. The market has spoken. People are willing to pay for content on the Internet, and even willing to endure commercials. Every day you don’t do this, you’re losing money and now you look like an asshole for supporting legislation that hampers the open Internet.

Thousands of sites including Wikipedia are going black today to protest, and show what the Internet could look like if SOPA/PIPA were enacted. It’s scary.

Please check out Google’s info on how to get involved in the fight along with a great infographic today you can find here:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful
regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs
already oppose SOPA and PIPA.