Though the public may be pirating a lot there's a disconnect between what they perceive as pirates and piracy and downloading torrents of the new Lady Gaga album. This is all about PR and when the opposition uses piracy to describe the bill the public has an easy time getting behind that. Whenever I hear SOPA on the news it is always described as "a bill that aims to reduce online piracy".

You make a good argument but that argument isn't aimed at the right audience. I for one have pirated copyrighted material but I wouldn't want my own work to be pirated and I'm actually for copyright. I'm pretty honest with myself so I recognize this disconnect and understand that SOPA is bad for the public but others like me hear "piracy" and immediately think of shady websites that steal credit cards and other individuals. It's always "someone else should be arrested for doing this but not me because (insert excuse here)". They just don't think of themselves or what they do as piracy. They think of it as isolated incidents that aren't a big deal even if their entire music collection came from the Pirate Bay.

The negative perception of piracy/pirates is fear mongering but it works. Also, despite the attitudes of Europeans that doesn't help. This is a US law and US citizens don't think that way. I don't want to offend anyone but I think that a lot of us here live in a bubble. We're surrounded by techies and programmers and people like us so we forget who we really need to convince.

It's people like our parents who we have to convince. Young people like me may get it completely of theyre tech savvy. If they're not then they get it to a decent degree. But young people in the US aren't as active in politics as they should be. There's been an impressive response to this but I still think our little bubble blinds us to the fact that far fewer people get it and are doing anything about this. Don't look at Occupy Wall Street, that issue comes from something that they personally relate to. Not having a job, being poor, and seeing the rich get richer while their financial situation isn't improving is very relatable, personal, and the cause lends itself easily to broad support. Piracy doesn't lend itself as well to such broad support. People aren't as concerned with the web as much they are about putting food on the table. To them this is a tech industry problem, not theirs.

I'm lucky and unlucky enough to be surrounded by mostly everyday folks and few techies. I'm 25 and I work primarily with people 10 to 40 years older than me (most are between 55-65). They're the people who vote. They can barely get MS Word to work. Those are, unfortunately, also the people who represent us in the US.

So while there may be decent support for piracy we still should broaden our scope and make this relatable to far more people. Make it about things people care about and use all the time like search engines and Facebook. If you tell them they could lose the ability to find what they search for because of censorship they'll come on board. If you say they can get sued or kicked off Facebook or YouTube for posting a picture or video of something copyrighted they'll be more responsive.

You're right that they may not care about due process so we can take that argument a step further and tell them in a way they understand. Instead of mentioning due process tell them their kid will (will not can) go to jail for posting the wrong thing on Facebook or downloading a single song. Or say they'll get a huge fine in the mail without warning. Let them know their online store will get shut down without warning and payments will be freezes. You'd be surprised at how many people who can barely use a mouse have had someone set up and online store for their little mom and pop shop or MLM business.

We're all so focused on logic and facts around here and that's not effective enough. It's one thing to have right on your side but it's another thing to be able to explain it to someone else. The web designers/developers here should understand this. We have to give our audience something they care about. We have to get people interested and listening before we can educate them and you do that by appealing to emotion by making it personal and relatable. I know it shouldn't be that way but that's how things work in the US. I'd rather swallow my pride and go about this in a way that works rather than insisting on being right and talking at people who don't want to listen.

You don't see the opposition talking about the facts, do you? They use emotion to get support. They make the word piracy negative and scare you with it while saying "we're doing this to protect you" which makes people okay with it. "Oh, so you just want to stop those dirty pirates? That's fine, put them all in jail because piracy is stealing and stealing is bad. Sure, I download a few torrents every now and then but I'm not a pirate" is the public's thinking. There's a lot of issues involved with SOPA and by trying to shove them all down the public's throat we're just overloading them and they're not listening. We have to focus on what gets this bill killed first and then try to change the attitudes of Americans. If we can just tell them how SOPA hurts the average working man without preaching about piracy and copyright we can kill this bill. Then we can all go off into our little splinter groups and do the same thing for piracy and copyright. 1. Kill SOPA. 2. Change attitudes towards piracy and copyright. 3. Stopping future SOPA style bills and getting pro-piracy/anti-copyright passed becomes far easier.

I won't be waving the pirate flag any time soon either. I'm still not convinced about it but I'm open to suggestion. The one reason I support copyright and am not a piracy fan is because as a creator I wouldn't want my work pirated. It would hurt me. But I'm still a consumer too and I see the danger of SOPA and don't want it passed. Even though I disagree with most people here I'm still with everyone in being against SOPA. I personally believe in a balance of power between creators and consumers. I'm willing to admit that the power is currently heavily favored toward the creators and wouldn't mind seeing copyright scaled back by a lot but I'm still not ready for it to go away completely nor do I think piracy is ethical.