Long ago the corporate oligarchy decided to let the Internet tech sector grow to the extent that it has in order to externalize the cost of deploying certain infrastructure and the cost of training the populous to become dependent on that infrastructure. Now that these tasks are complete what reason do they have to delay taking control of this particular DARPA project ?

You have to be willing to show them that reason in order to save your business. You all have to innovate a solution. How are you going to join together with the other businesses in your sector to PIVOT TOGETHER in order to jolt ordinary people out of their careless stupor and educate them about how to force the hand of those corporations who could easily solve the problem ?

Do you really think a black page background and a banner is anything more than a sloppy haphazard attempt to save your industry ?

Aren't you risking shareholder value if your company is not engaging a significant percentage of it's resources towards engineering a plan to resist the takeover of the key infrastructure that your business needs in order to survive ?

How can you justify that kind of risk taking to your board ?

VC's what percentage of your fund's budget is set aside for the task of preserving the Internet that your portfolio will rely on ?

Ordinary people won't care if a page is black or not or if some banner is present or not, but if twitter, instagram, and pintrest for example all go offline at the same time
that would send a message. Or what about if all the major social startups started paying attention to HTTP referer headers and they started redirecting inbound visitors to educational splash screens based on their referred header? The splash screens would educate these people about how they should really change their default search engine or delete their Facebook account in order to help save the Internet.

I'm not saying we should pick on Google or Facebook specifically per say, but I do think that if enough "social pressure" was applied Google alone could fix the problem by helping the Internet route around the entities who are engaged in a Denial Of Service attack on key Internet infrastructure. All Google has to do is punish a few corporate websites like they did to rapgenius the other day. That's a good start at least. Does your startup "scene" have a plan to help force google's hand ? If not then why not ?

If all of the major web startups started doing this kind of thinking Google would have to take this stuff more seriously REAL FAST. Think about it! That's how you send a real "social signal".

Why is this industry not trying to defend itself ? Ask yourself this question.. Who controls your company ? Who gets to decide how important preserving a free Internet is to the long term viability of your business? Has your company already sold out ?

Founders, where do you stand ? How willing are you to be public about where you stand and how long are you going to wait ? How long can you afford to wait before you take action with others in order to save your business ? Why aren't you already more organized on this issue ? Why aren't you ready ? Why are you not taking this threat to your business more seriously ? Why do you apparently assume you are powerless ?