Nice sentiment, but I think boycotts are way less effective than many of the alternatives he discards. In this system, you change a congressman's mind and there's only two ways to do that: pour on the outrage, or contribute more money.
Tongue in cheek, I think there is another alternative: the tech industry could simply buy the movie companies. Some of them are certainly sitting on enough cash.
"In this system, you change a congressman's mind and there's only two ways to do that: pour on the outrage, or contribute more money."
If by contributing more money to a congressman you can affect the outcome of legislation/laws made in a country, doesnt that mean there is something wrong with the system that resulted in such a situation ? Shouldn't that be addressed and solved first?
This. All this effort into stopping single pieces of legislation could be better directed into fixing the political system. Everyone knows that senators can be bought, but we still play the game and protest the legislation instead of the process causing the legislation.
Why don't http://rootstrikers.org/ and Laurence Lessig get brought up in these discussions more?
Ultimately fixing the system is the way to go. I don't think the OP's boycotts would do ANYTHING to address that issue. As a short-term fix having tech giants throw money at politicians would probably be effective. However then the tech industry is one of the vested interests in NOT fixing the system because they're a big player in it... Kind of a catch-22
Tongue in cheek, I think there is another alternative: the tech industry could simply buy the movie companies. Some of them are certainly sitting on enough cash.