[molmalo]

The point is to affect their quarter balance.

Consuming their products either way, is just the same. The money ends up in their hands.

But for a boycott to be effective, you need to create awareness to generate real-world actions. Otherwise, only the tech-savvy ones will do something, and the boycott won't reach the scale needed.

Anyway, I don't believe that a boycott is a good alternative. That would hurt mostly to the weakest links of the chain; employees who work for little money, and the big companies won't hesitate to fire, if they feel the need to keep their numbers fine, just to don't make their shareholders angry.

Let's remember that we are in the middle of a nice tech-bubble here, most of us making some good money, but the rest of the economy is in really bad shape. I don't think this is a good time to push them to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

I'm having sort of a dilemma here... I have to meditate it a bit longer.

[nate_meurer]

This argument reminds me of the way logging companies defend clear-cutting old-growth forests by simply saying that loggers need jobs. If your main concern is simply to preserve jobs, then it's never a good time to start a boycott.

If your main concern is defense of liberty, if I may be so bold, then now is most definitely an appropriate time to start a boycott.