Gauntlet officially thrown down. I respect PG even more for taking a stand on this. Now we need to figure out the best way to get people opposed to SOPA on a grand scale. No disrespect to the HN community, but I wonder how much of an impact we really have had thus far. Tumblr, Reddit, and Mozilla have done a fairly good job of this, but they are not large enough to do it on their own. Next we need Google and Facebook to get more involved as I think that would make awareness of this issue skyrocket. Any thoughts on pragmatic approaches to getting the public more involved?
1) Adjust the movement to be about INTERNET FREEDOM, not SOPA. This is because the bill can be delayed/stopped til there's an anti-child porn bill with similar wording.
eg "Demand INTERNET FREEDOM bills to replace the ANTI-INTERNET bills [of SOPA, PROTECT-IP, DMCA, etc]"
2) Having INTERNET FREEDOM bills would make it impossible for laws like SOPA to pass. As a bonus, compromises can be made while having some INTERNET FREEDOM. Whereas with SOPA, they're watering down some parts that still lead to ANTI-INTERNET. Which further encourages ANTI-INTERNET supporters to make huge demands. It's a technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
3) Find Congress people that love Internet. I hope there's a few! Ask if they can be the mascots, the INTERNET messiah, etc.
4) Copy and paste SOPA to start with. Replace the words to protect INTERNET instead. This is a delicious backfire of using someone's work and their own weapons against them.
5) Add a way for people to be excepted from the movement to the services. Also allow a way for people to understand why the companies are no longer appearing politically neutral (because the anti-INTERNET bills are going to kill them).
6) Add some masking of dropped services with JS hover and non-JS side-by-side of anti-FREEDOM warning 'of increased costs to comply with the legal demands of other companies'.
7) Of course, provide a simple link to the INTERNET FREEDOM movement that has to have two different sections;
a) Simple. A video, simple acts to perform to demand and spread the information. This is an attempt to educate people with simplicity. A link is provided to advanced for more complex information.
b) Advanced. 'Nerds', that understand the terminology, and what it's about. How to demand and spread information. Also how to explain with simple education if some people don't understand.
I tried to suggest some of this to Reddit's ideas for admins but got ghostbanned and censured because apparently it's 'politics' despite Reddit's recent anti-SOPA support.
