Today it feels like the entire internet is rallying against SOPA & PIPA. We’re certainly part of that, encouraging our users to take action and make their voice heard by displaying banners on all our sites and posting about it on every property we own, even those that have nothing to do with technology.

Yet I fear that it’s not enough. I fear that the outcry may not resound beyond the echo chamber of the tech-sphere and related sites with enough force to make it known that the internet simply will not stand for laws such as SOPA and PIPA (or derivates) being passed. At best, I think this may simply buy us some time.

Why am I so pessimistic about this? Well, just look at this little screen shot and you’ll understand why.

These two reactions are indicative of what is being retweed of the Twitter account herpderpedia which is retweeting peoples reactions to Wikipedia being blacked out today.

Most of the reactions have a few things in common – they neither have a clue what SOPA / PIPA are, nor do they care to look it up.

Obviously all of these people visited Wikipedia and have been presented with the following when trying to find what they were looking for:

What’s glaringly obvious is the fact that very few of them have clicked the “learn more” button, and that those few who have, either lacked the will or ability to read the information they were presented with.

As they say on Reddit – “TL;DR”. (“Too long didn’t read” for those of you who haven’t come across that before.)

There-in lies the problem – All of the sites that have blacked out will be back online tomorrow, and all those people who are pissed off today will promptly forget while they copy/paste their homework assignments tomorrow.

Sure there will be more media coverage today in the mainstream media and a few more people will rally to the cause but tomorrow everything will go back to normal and the everyday public won’t pay any more attention to it.

I hate to say it, but as long as people care more about the size of Kim Kardashian’s ass and who’s she’s shagging then a one day outage isn’t going to make this problem go away.

We may kill SOPA and PIPA but, like a bad case of herpes, they will flare up again at some point in the future. Maybe not with the same name, but as long as politicians are allowed to accept bribes from lobbyists (yes, “contribution” is a nice word for “bribe”), as long as politicians can be bought and sold, then it’s only a matter of time before we, the tech savy portion of internet users, are once again scrambling to rally support and apply ointment to a new batch of puss filled sores.

Speaking of herpes and Kim Kardashians ass – maybe we would get a lot more traction if people were unable get their fix of the Kardashians or find pictures of her for more than a week?

Unfortunately, it’s highly unlikely that Google et al, will ever pull their services for that long, but can you imagine the difference it would make?

Google didn’t go dark today, but they did join the protest by changing their front page and calling users to action.

Facebook, which apparently has crossed the 1 billion users mark hasn’t even bothered to write a blog post about it. Nothing.

I’m pissed at Facebook for that, but I understand why. They get that most people simply don’t “get it” and when presented with the info go TL;DR.

Facebook understands that most people just want things to work, and when things don’t work online, they simply bitch about it and go else where. Facebook gets that most people (outside of the tech-sphere) simply don’t give a shit. They have too much going on in their day to day lives, that does not encompass the internet, to give a crap that sites are out today. They treat it as a minor inconvenience (like having their water shut off for repairs) and as long as it comes back tomorrow, who cares?

Now, if Facebook went offline for a week the landscape would truly change. But they won’t because people would go to Google + instead and life would continue. It’s only when everything is gone, that people finally stand up and take notice.

You don’t know what you’ve got until you’ve lost it, but by then it’s too late.

So the challenge remains for those of who are aware of what’s being attacked to come up with a new way to present this to the public at large. How can we make them aware on their terms about what they are going to lose? Continued black outs? How many of your non-web savvy friends even know what Reddit is?

Is there a better way we can present the information? Something that would make more sense than pounding people with words like copyright infringement, intellectual property, DNS servers and other such terms which make the average persons eye’s gloss over and switch to Fox News?

I don’t have the answers, but I know that you folks, you dear readers are an opinionated an insightful  bunch so lets have a bit of discussion here. Am I wrong? Will this be enough, or do we need to employ other methods and what should those methods be?

While you’re thinking about that, have a look at this screenshot to remind you of what we’re up against.

So where do we go from here? How do we stop this from flaring up again?

UPDATE: Facebook now has an official page about their stance with regards to SOPA and PIPA, but, as if to prove my point, they’re not doing anything to make their 1 billion users aware it exists, beyond Zuckerberg’s post on his account.