"Rather than just look at how legislation can be stopped, ask yourself: Where do we go from here? Don't limit your opinion to what's the wrong thing to do, ask yourself what's right."

So Wikipedia responded by blacking out their (English) site to protest and create public awareness, then stated their objections to provisions X, Y and Z.

That is not "people that are in a position to do something, and that have the knowledge for it, [making] suggestions," it is just "repeatedly [pointing] out what they find wrong with the bill."

That ain't gonna do it. The media industry did not just say, "Hey Congress, piracy is threatening our livelihood; could you figure out some way to fix that?" They suggested various MEANS of doing so. If no others are suggested, guess which ones will win by default.


People simply voting once every two years on whether to keep legislators who enacted hordes of policies of which they are only vaguely and distantly aware is how democracy FAILS, not how it works. You think we got the 40 hour work week by people telling Congress, "our bosses make us work too much; can you fix that?" Think we got the Clean Water Act by people saying, "hey, Congress, my soup tastes like gasoline; is there anything you can do about that?"

TELL them what you WANT; they are not mindreaders, and piracy is a serious growing problem. Faced with industry lobbies saying, "do X, Y and Z" to correct a real problem and netizens saying, "no, it will be the end of elife as we know it!" they will choose the former every time. They WILL pass a new law sooner or later; if you do not want it to be SOPA and/or PIPA, tell them what you DO want (like Obama requested) because telling them what you do NOT want is counterproductive until/unless they have an alternative. That would be true in any such case, but is particularly so in the case of the internet, where most Congressmen MUST rely on what they are told about an issue on which few, if any, of them are deeply knowledgeable.

Again, ya'll are doing a great job convincing me of two things:

1) SOPA and PIPA are horrible bills and
2) They will soon be law anyway because no one can see past that far enough to admit SOME bill is necessary and propose a better one.