Form a group, pick a person in a 'safe' seat, preferably a senator as those are pretty much the safest seats out there, and get them unelected over this issue. Ensure the issue gets media coverage as to your group.
Anything else will do pretty much nothing. In two years get someone else unelected.
Diane Feinstein would be a perfect target, she represents the valley, has been in the Senate forever, and won the last election by a HUGE margin. If you could get her unelected you would put everyone else on notice.
The reality of the situation is that this won't happen. There is no permanent solution because everything is triangulated and marketed so well that it's virtually impossible to change it. People pass this legislation because no one cares and whatever negative ads get run during the 30 days before the election matter far more than anything else and quite frankly most people will be more upset about THEIR pet issue than YOUR pet issue.
If you could get Google or Wikipedia, etc to focus solely on getting ONE person unelected then it would show clout. But they won't because it would cause such a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions because 1/3 of their user base votes for her party no matter what they do, and 1/3 dislikes both parties and something about keeping politics free from corporate influence, which is something both parties agree on unless that influence comes in the form of campaign contributions, PACs, lobbyists, etc.
You've got a political system in which no one cares about habeas corpus. If they don't care about that then they aren't going to give a shit about dismantling the internet. Bread and circuses my friend.
Well, this is a "democracy" (in irony quotes), so there's no permanent solution to anything, as there will always be elections.
Perhaps a better and more sustainable solution would to galvanize this energy around SOPA into a culture of activism. After calling our senators and representatives, we should move on to talking the media and call them out when they broadcast misleading statements from the MPAA/RIAA (like the oft-cited $770 billion(!) lost to piracy every year). This would help us build a base.
Also, this fatalist attitude of things doing nothing is
a) wrong
and b) just gives you an excuse to give up.
For example, remember the anti-war protests during 2003? Those were the LARGEST PROTESTS IN HISTORY. Yet they did not to stop the war. Luckily, everyone did not adopt the attitude of "protests do nothing, we need to do X". And those who did adopt the "protests do nothing, we need to do X" attitude were proved wrong yesterday.
We did something yesterday. While it did not go as far a some people hoped, we did do something. And that is a victory we can build on.
Well, Wikipedia is a non-profit and is limited in the political action it can take. We're also non-partisan, and endorsing particular candidates is bad.
Choosing to unelect a single candidate has nothing to do with non-partisanship, you're choosing to unelect a single candiate similarly to how you chose to oppose a particular piece of legislation.
Wikipedia could be non-partisan and not endorse a particular candidate and still do a whole tonne of damage to Diane Feinstein's run for the Senate.
Opposing her election would have nothing to do with which party she's affiliated with and everything to do with her support for SOPA which you already oppose. You wouldn't even have to endorse a candidate just run a huge banner ad repeating a statement damaging to Diane Feinstein's candidacy.
Maybe something like a big picture of a burning american flag a picture of Feinstein and the words "Diane Feinstein hates free speech." Turn it into a speech issue and get the ACLU to make a BFD out of it via Streisand effect as she tries to sue wikipedia for violation of CFR rules. Then the next week run an image saying "Diane Feinstein thinks wikipedia should be shut down". Then go edit her page and put all the horrible factual things she's doing to wikipedia via the lawsuit.
Maybe election season could be the new donate to wikipedia season.
I'm not saying that it's particularly good idea for wikipedia as an org. just that if there was the desire to send a message to politicians that it could be done.
But it won't because of the aforementioned shitstorm it would cause. If people took on a little more of a scorched earth policy they could get a lot more done.
Exactly what Maddox suggests, don't buy their products. This is about counterfeit goods, and access to cheap competition.
Its nothing but building protectionist markets, the same ones most western nations have been fighting for the last hundred years because they entrap people, prevent competition, cause monopolies, and abuse customers. Its against the free markets, which (problems of market abuse aside) is getting money into developing economies and helping people. Its a great step backwards world economics and trade.
So hit them where it hurts, they are obviously scared of the new markets enough to try and outlaw them. Take 30 minutes out of your day to write a letter to a company and explain to them you are disgusted, they have lost a customer, and you will from now on buy counterfeit goods instead of theirs.
I will be doing my part by downloading all the mp3s I want, I'll go see the shows in person to make sure the artists get there dues, and I'll wait to see these middle men slowly fade... but I'm sure we are only about to see fireworks start, theres going to be some big noise as some of these guys go down.
I am generally skeptical of boycotts as a political tactic, because if the boycotts aren’t large enough to make a significant dent on the target company’s revenues, the effect is just noise. The Walt Disney company is grossing about $40 billion a year. How many people need to swear off buying Disney products, for how long, before the company even notices?
TBH companies aren't the problem. Companies are mindless automatons that act in one single purpose (to make money). Even people trying to change the world have to be money first to fund secondary projects.
So the behaviour is expected, the real problem is the political system and the legalised corrupt behaviour.
Maddox is correct, things are going to have to get worse. You need massive public anger to change what is essentially a few tiny aspects of how politicians deal with lobbyist, they are just gaming the system, they don't care if laws pass or don't as they get money either way, tonnes of it. The more ridiculous the law, the more money the get to push it. Tackle that issue and you'll liberate the whole country.
So you need to get people mad, how you do that is up to you guys as I don't live in America, I just watch from the side lines shaking my head.
However, the article suggests that if some terrible legislation passed it would ignite people into real action. That clearly failed to happen when the Patriot Act was passed. I'm sure there are many more examples. If the discourse surrounding legislation convinces enough people not to care (or fails to make it into wider public awareness), then there doesn't seem to be much standing in its way.
Vote with your wallet. Stop buying or consuming content from the IP mafia and convince others to do so. Don't buy records, especially don't listen to Spotify (all the money goes directly to the record labels, etc, almost none to the artists), don't go to the movie theater or buy movies, stop watching TV. The money you give (directly or indirectly through ads) to the MAFIAA racket will be spent on lobbying counterproductive laws. And then stop pirating that stuff, so you won't be a part of the statistics that are given to the politicians to convince that piracy is harmful.
Sounds difficult? Maybe. I did this, I stopped watching TV in 1999, going to the movies in 2001 and listening to music in 2006. The content I would have wanted wasn't (and still isn't) available at a price and terms that I could accept, so I don't want it. Not that I paid for the media I consumed, I pirated most of the stuff. But I don't want to be a part of the piracy statistics to give excuses for killing the internet.
I still enjoy music, though. Maybe even more now that I'm not constantly listening to it so the rare occasion when I do hear music, it sounds better. I do allow myself exceptions every now and then but most of the time I don't consume MAFIAA products or feel like I'm missing anything.
At minimum, a patch to the legislative system that requires actual voters' opinions (and not just lobbyist voters, but rather a statistically-random sampling) somewhere along the track to getting bills passed, even if it's just as a veto.
Preferably, though, a more complete restructuring of the legislative system that more tightly constricts what an individual bill can do (so nothing can be "tacked on" to anything else), requires that bills expire and must be re-evaluated after some period, and perhaps enables something equivalent to the "double-jeapordy" condition of the judicial system, where once a bill has been rejected for containing particular offensive clauses, no bill may then be introduced from then on if it contains those clauses or anything which would be equivalent in effect to them.
Bringing voter opinion into the picture for each piece of legislature would be a disaster. It's unreasonable to expect the public to be educated enough on each issue to meaningfully participate in this issue. What would happen is that it would make things worse, as politicians would have to pump even more money into advertisements for his/her pet issue; deepening the unfortunate dependency on special interest money from politicians.
The real solution is to tackle the lobbying and campaign finance issues, and all of these other issues will improve.
Well, sure, if you just expect them to vote with no priming whatsoever, they're going to make a stupid decision. This would be somewhat like asking a jury to vote on someone's guilt or innocence without first having a trial, or to vote on a representative without first having campaigns and debates (which I still consider kind of piffling in comparison, but that's a different issue.)
So—following instead on the judicial branch's nice example of bottom-up democratic decision making—why not just take 12 random folks, put them in a room, introduce the bill, bring out those in favour to make their points, and then—this is important—bring out a true devil's advocate to make the strongest possible case against the bill—and then have the jury vote on whether to pass it on? The worst thing that could happen is that the legal process would bog down greatly, because of all the bills suddenly not getting passed.
(Also, I don't think there's a real way to stop lobbying in spirit. Perhaps in whatever its current form is, yes, but there will always be new ways for corporations to make someone's life happier and more comfortable in exchange for undue political consideration. Unless we can remove the incentive corporations have to do this—by restructuring the legislative system itself—they will continue to apply all their ingenuity to the "problem" of making law that most greatly benefits them. And they will keep getting away with it, because the devices built into humans that we use to punish one-another for these sorts of social norm violations—shaming, group-exile, and the like—don't apply to corporate entities, which can split, merge, rename, dissolve and recreate at will, without a single actual employee having to move office. "Blackwater" is a shunned name, now, but hardly anyone has an opinion about "XE"... but oh, wait, it's called "Academi" now—I hadn't even heard!)
Small comment - actual voters' opinions isn't necessarily enough, if voters aren't informed about the actual consequences/implications of the legislation.
When SOPA came up in discussion recently amongst a few folks I was talking to, as soon as they heard the full spoken name of the bill - 'Stop Online Piracy Act' - they began to put their support behind it. That's how quickly and easily opinions can be formed - it took some calm and open discussion before they began to even consider it as a potential gray area.
I wonder (seriously) if banning names for bills wouldn't be a bad idea. No more cutesy names or names that are a blantant sympathy ploy ("Rachels's Law", or whatever). Just make them refer to it as HR3415 or whatever the actual designation is.
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing — that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something." — Richard Feynman
I guess the effect you're describing could've been multiplied if SOPA had been a backronym too. "USA PATRIOT Act? How could that be bad! Just look at its name!"
Create mini congresses for subcommittees. For stuff that's absolutely massive, Congress does a relatively good job of threshing out the issues. They have real debates in the public eye. For smaller issues, it's farmed out to subcommittees, who put the legislation together in back-rooms, usually after "discussing the issue with relavant stakeholders".
It would be to slow to do everything in Congress (that's why they have the subcommittees), but they could prepare the legislation in a much more transparent member. The members wouldn't like it, but that's their problem.
You could also require that bills are only valid if they are well described by their titles. So, you couldn't call stuff "Stop Online Piracy Act" unless you were willing to have in knocked down in the Supreme Court for having a silly name.
There will be no permanent solution that works for "the people".
Think about it, throughout history when a sufficiently powerful or profitable medium of information exchange has arisen (think radio, television, phones, mail), the govt. at the behest of rich corporations has legislated it. Every single time!
Laws are first passed to "curb criminal elements", which is what we are seeing now, then a few years down the road laws will be passed to allow the activity with prescribed limits...imagine Internet permits. Then, finally, tax money will subsidize the actual sell of the medium to large corporations to dole out in prescribed amounts to the public...for a fee.
