The reason for this is because a lot of the tech community are pro-piracy and tend to talk more about how they should be able to freely download and distribute copyrighted material because traditional distribution channels are outdated in light of current technology. That's certainly something worth discussing but now isn't the right time and the protests aren't the right place at least when talking to the public. A lot of the discussions I've read focus on piracy and throw in web censorship as an afterthought.
We need to leave torrents, file sharing, the Pirate Bay, and the others out of this and focus in on domain seizures, the cutting of funding, the lack of due process.
Most importantly we need to Explain it in a way that they can relate to!!!. Don't talk about Google and other sites being censored, search result censorship, and all of that as much as you should be saying things like:
"The government is giving media companies the power to:
- take down your Facebook post, your YouTube video of your cute baby son singing along to a copyrighted song...
- shut down your mom and pop shop website because you used a logo you shouldn't have by accident, mentioned a wrong name, or even slightly threatened to take away a single customer from a larger company
- etc. etc. etc. all without due process! All it takes is some company making a single complaint and you can be lose money, business, sources of funding, your domain name"
That's the kind of conversation that we, who know about this stuff, need to tell the public. Remember, a lot of these people think Internet Explorer is the Internet. They think you have to type in a URL in Google then click a link to get where you want to go (I've even seen someone type in www.google.com in Google's own search box!). We need to talk to them in a language they understand. It's not their fault they aren't tech savvy but it's still our responsibility to make sure they understand what we're talking about.
No jargon. No big words. Make it relatable. Don't talk down to them but do educate them on the issues, not technology.
I totally disagree that we should leave piracy out of it completely. The bill is called the Stop Online Piracy Act, if we don't mention piracy at all it will look like dodging the issue. We need to say something like
"It claims to be about piracy, but it won't have any effect on piracy because tech-savvy people like pirates can easily get around the restrictions, it will only harm legitimate internet users like you."
From then on the person is inoculated against the "but piracy!" argument.
That's one way to do it. That's fair. If it were me I'd only bring up piracy if they did and I wouldn't repeat the word piracy, I'd call it file sharing but I wouldn't go into it more than what's absolutely necessary. We have to do like the Republicans. Pick a slogan and hammer it hard.
We need to leave torrents, file sharing, the Pirate Bay, and the others out of this and focus in on domain seizures, the cutting of funding, the lack of due process.
Most importantly we need to Explain it in a way that they can relate to!!!. Don't talk about Google and other sites being censored, search result censorship, and all of that as much as you should be saying things like:
"The government is giving media companies the power to:
- take down your Facebook post, your YouTube video of your cute baby son singing along to a copyrighted song...
- shut down your mom and pop shop website because you used a logo you shouldn't have by accident, mentioned a wrong name, or even slightly threatened to take away a single customer from a larger company
- etc. etc. etc. all without due process! All it takes is some company making a single complaint and you can be lose money, business, sources of funding, your domain name"
That's the kind of conversation that we, who know about this stuff, need to tell the public. Remember, a lot of these people think Internet Explorer is the Internet. They think you have to type in a URL in Google then click a link to get where you want to go (I've even seen someone type in www.google.com in Google's own search box!). We need to talk to them in a language they understand. It's not their fault they aren't tech savvy but it's still our responsibility to make sure they understand what we're talking about.
No jargon. No big words. Make it relatable. Don't talk down to them but do educate them on the issues, not technology.