The reality is that you need both. Getting 4.5 million people to sing the anti-SOPA/PIPA petition and blacking out Wikipedia to so that lots of users notice is part of getting them to wake up. It's not everything, by all means. You also need to have smart people who are playing the inside game, which means donating money to organizations who can play the Washington D.C influence game. Yes, it's dirty; yes, you will have to compromise from time to time, including donating $17,000 to Lamar Smith over six years (although to be fair the last donation was a year before Smith started working on SOPA, and it's nothing compared to the $94 million dollars the pro-Internet-Censorship forces poured into trying to buy this legislation). No question, the sausage making factory is ugly; but like the patent system, sometimes you have to play the game with the current set of rules, even as you work to try to change the rules. (Which is why companies like Red Hat and Google are filing software patents.)
So the big question is: what have you done on both fronts? Yes, anti-SOPA blackouts for the day are not effective, at least not as a standalone thing. But have you donated to the EFF? If you work for a computer/internet company, have you urged them to set up a PAC to try to influence legislation in Washington in the correct direction? And then have you donated to that PAC? I've personally donated to both the EFF and Google NetPAC. If you haven't done these things yet, today, the day after the anti-SOPA protests, is a great day to start.
By the way, if you think fighting SOPA is hard, just do a bit of research how much money big pharma could pour into defending the patent system as it exists today. If we all aren't pushing to make sure there are lobbyists working just as hard to influence legislators in the other direction, patent reform doesn't have a prayer.
So the big question is: what have you done on both fronts? Yes, anti-SOPA blackouts for the day are not effective, at least not as a standalone thing. But have you donated to the EFF? If you work for a computer/internet company, have you urged them to set up a PAC to try to influence legislation in Washington in the correct direction? And then have you donated to that PAC? I've personally donated to both the EFF and Google NetPAC. If you haven't done these things yet, today, the day after the anti-SOPA protests, is a great day to start.
By the way, if you think fighting SOPA is hard, just do a bit of research how much money big pharma could pour into defending the patent system as it exists today. If we all aren't pushing to make sure there are lobbyists working just as hard to influence legislators in the other direction, patent reform doesn't have a prayer.