Microsoft, Apple and Others Withdrawal Support for SOPA
Can anyone on the inside explain how this kind of thing works?<p>This is my thinking:<p>These companies belong to different trade groups. They pay their dues, contribute opinions on different things, but mostly leave these groups alone and go on doing their actual business.<p>Meanwhile, the trade groups advance their own agenda, given a mostly free hand by their constituency, which again, has better things to do. The group doesn't actually do all that much that's useful, otherwise their staff would be working for real companies. But they shuffle papers around, undertake activities like, say, harass small businesses about software licenses, and generally look like they have a reason for being.<p>Then, occasionally, these groups will step in dogshit and have to field a bunch of phone calls basically saying "Why the fuck am I paying you dues in exchange for this bad press? Make it go away."<p>And then the offending group needs to walk back the cat as happened in this blog post.<p>Plausible? Is that how this works? The explanation with the most incompetence involved seems most likely to me.