Pay close attention. This is how people manage to kill normal sensible ideas.

The attack comes on several levels, all of which are dependent on having at least some website/newsite which is willing to repeat your claims.

Your audience can be broken into 3 buckets (several more, but 3 is enough for a demonstration)

1) The first bucket is non-experts but intelligent. Tie them down in various plausible sounding arguments, primarily designed to appeal to people who dont't know the subject, but can make out logical sounding arguments. These people become your rank and file who serve to sound convincing and tie up experts

2) Experts - With your rank and file, tie up all people who know the subject, or increasingly develop methods to keep them distant from actual contact with people. Over simplify their arguments and try and engage Experts in the arena of PR.

3) Everyone else - show that experts are out of touch, or just lie, advertise the benefits and leave out the risks. Point out that experts are currently in debate and cant settle on the benefits (thanks to your hard work).

The general 3 steps to spreading FUD

Yeah, that's the thing. It's not hard to turn right & left against each other, then the lobbyists profit off of that. Just had to get each side to want to use the problem for their own political ends and divide us over how to address it.

But I think we should try to remember and go back to the fact that essentially nobody likes what the ISPs want to do at all. If we could find a more agreeable way to address it and not let it get twisted to further other agendas, I think most people could agree that it needs to be stopped.

The lesson I've learned is that this is no longer the world for the open exchange of ideas. Mostly because people are already waiting to subvert your arguments.

This is dealt with by PR, advertising and focus groups.