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    Categories: Legal DramaMediaShift Podcast

Mediatwits #34: SOPA Protests Make a Difference; Yang Out at Yahoo

Welcome to the 34th episode of “The Mediatwits,” the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift’s Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali. This week the show is mainly focused on the huge day of protest online Wednesday against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) before the U.S. Congress. After Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites went black, and millions signed petitions and called lawmakers, at least 40 representatives and Senators said they wouldn’t support the bills in their current form. It was a breathtaking display of online organization that got results.

Special guest Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch discussed the role that Google played in educating people and helping them take action. Plus, Sullivan created one of the more creative memes by sending a telegram to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) because she didn’t have an active Twitter or Facebook page. (Click the image above-left to see the telegram at full size.) In other news, Chief Yahoo and company co-founder Jerry Yang announced he was stepping down as Yahoo tries again to turn the tanker around. Special guest Eric Jackson, an activist investor in Yahoo, talks about the brightened prospects for the web giant now that Yang has departed.

Check it out!

mediatwits34.mp3

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Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.

Here are some highlighted topics from the show:

Danny Sullivan

Intro

1:10: Rafat is going away to get married and to take a long honeymoon trip

3:00: There are more serious issues that should get this much attention

5:00: A clear explanation of the SOPA and PIPA bills before Congress

7:15: Rundown of topics on the podcast

Huge day of protesting SOPA online

8:00: Special guest Danny Sullivan

11:10: Sullivan: Big media companies should make content easier to find, buy

13:00: Should be an easier way to pull down infringing sites

15:10: Sullivan explains why he did the telegram for Sen. Feinstein

19:00: Obama comes out against the bills in their current form

Yang out at Yahoo

Eric Jackson

20:20: Special guest Eric Jackson

22:40: Jackson: Investors have shied away from Yahoo stock

25:40: Jackson is heartened by new CEO Scott Thompson

28:00: Jackson: Shareholders could get a special dividend

More Reading

SOPA protest by the numbers: 162M pageviews, 7 million signatures at Ars Technica

Your Guide to the Anti-SOPA Protests at MediaShift

Put Down the Pitchforks on SOPA at NY Times

Where Do Your Members of Congress Stand on SOPA and PIPA? at ProPublica

Protect IP Act Senate whip count at OpenCongress

Senator Ron Wyden To The Internet: Thank You For Speaking Up… But We’re Not Done Yet at TechDirt

With Twitter, Blackouts and Demonstrations, Web Flexes Its Muscle at NY Times

Google Blackens Its Logo To Protest SOPA/PIPA, While Bing & Yahoo Carry On As Usual at Search Engine Land

Protests lead to weakening support for Protect IP, SOPA at CNET

Jerry Yang’s Departure Means Major Transformations for Yahoo! at Forbes.com

Yahoo’s Yang is gone. That was the easy part at CNET

With Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang departed from board, Yahoo seeks a new course at Mercury News

Weekly Poll

Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time about the anti-SOPA protests:

Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit. and Circle him on Google+

Mark Glaser :Mark Glaser is founder and executive director of MediaShift. He contributes regularly to Digital Content Next’s InContext site and newsletter. Glaser is a longtime freelance journalist whose career includes columns on hip-hop, reviews of videogames, travel stories, and humor columns that poked fun at the titans of technology. From 2001 to 2005, he wrote a weekly column for USC Annenberg School of Communication's Online Journalism Review. Glaser has written essays for Harvard's Nieman Reports and the website for the Yale Center for Globalization. Glaser has written columns on the Internet and technology for the Los Angeles Times, CNET and HotWired, and has written features for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, the San Jose Mercury News, and many other publications. He was the lead writer for the Industry Standard's award-winning "Media Grok" daily email newsletter during the dot-com heyday, and was named a finalist for a 2004 Online Journalism Award in the Online Commentary category for his OJR column. Glaser won the Innovation Journalism Award in 2010 from the Stanford Center for Innovation and Communication. Glaser received a Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife Renee and his two sons, Julian and Everett. Glaser has been a guest on PBS' "Newshour," NPR's "Talk of the Nation," KALW's "Media Roundtable" and TechTV's "Silicon Spin." He has given keynote speeches at Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Diversity Retreat and the College Media Assocation's national convention. He has been part of the lecture/concert series at Yale Law School and Arkansas State University, and has moderated many industry panels. He spoke in May 2013 to the Maui Business Brainstormers about the "Digital Media Revolution." To inquire about speaking opportunities, please use the site's Contact Form.

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