Where's there's a hot topic issue, the Republicans will come out in lockstep with voices on the same wavelength. They use clear and simple language with a single antagonist. In the really big battles they even coin phrases like 'Obamacare', 'Death tax', & 'energy exploration', that succinctly convey their point of view. Each of those phrases will be used repeatedly by every Republican on TV, until their opponents (Democrats) even adopt the same language they've invented.

This why I like that 'shoplifter in the store' analogy. Its pretty simple and relatable to just about anyone. On the topic of language though, the opponents of SOPA should be creating their own word/phrase. If we refer to SOPA as 'online piracy', then we've already conceded more ground that we need to.

This is the word: Prohibition. It's our "death panels".

This is how you tell it to grandma:

  - The music & movie industries want a Prohibition on user-created content.
  - When radio was invented, they wanted a Prohibition on it.
  - When cable TV was invented, they wanted a Prohibition on it.
  - When the VCR was invented, they wanted a Prohibition on it.
  - Now Youtube and many other websites have been invented.
  - Youtube is very entertaining; you can watch funny cat videos all day long.
  - They want the Government to create a Prohibition on Youtube.

If I had to paint in broad, evocative strokes, I'd claim the industries are using the government to prop up their outdated business models by destroying competition from users.

So I'd suggest 'Monopoly.'

"They want the Government to create a Prohibition so they can have a Monopoly on content"

That said, I do think 'Prohibition' is an accurate description. SOPA may well be the first step in a 'War on Piracy' that does have strong parallels with '20s prohibition and the drug war. SOPA is a futile attempt to stop normal human behavior - sharing of content. It won't work. The fact that it won't work could lead to even more draconian blocking measures, creating a self-reinforcing loop of ever-escalating restrictions and punishments. 'Prohibition' conveys that futility and extremeness pretty well for a single term.

The key thing to focus on is the imbalance of power SOPA creates and how that will end up getting in the way of Uncle Art's evening entertainment. So far the shoplifting shutting down the store analogy is the most pointed I've heard, but still not a catch phrase.

My hope with the term 'Prohibition' is to turn it around and put the focus on the evil being done by the media companies. They want the government take away your rights, because they don't want to compete fair and square with web technologies.

Here's an analogy I've been using that might work: "They're tying your hands behind your back so you have to pay them to feed you."

Yes- they are so good at this, its a great lesson in conveying with power.. George Lakoff beautifully explains how they do this in his book- "Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate".. You also mention they get the other political parties to use "their" terminology as well, George Lakoff goes through this in the book as well. I found a ton of communication lessons in the book, and I dont think the tone will alienate anyone, even though its clear the author doesn't lean too far to the right. A great book to read if anyone is at all interested in how the Right owns the game...

If some kids at a mall talk about shoplifting, all the malls that company owns get shut down without a trial.

We know and understand user-created content because we've been using it (and creating it) for years. That's the thing we need to get across to the great masses - not that websites should be penalised for giving out unauthorised copies (which they'll largely agree with), but that a huge percentage of the websites they use and love are no more in constant control of what appears on every page of their websites than malls are able to control every last thing that happens within them, and that the penalties should be organised accordingly.

The real metaphor is, "If you own a pawn shop and let obviously dirt broke people come in and sell you stolen Rolexes all the time, you may be shut down."

It is like you own this huge supermarket. Lately some shady guys have started putting flyers with information on where you could buy pirated merchandise from China for cheap.

With SOPA this would mean the Governmnet could shut down _your_ supermarket because someone found one of these flyers at your place.

I think this runs at odds with what some people are trying to do, which is educate the electorate on why this kind of thing is a bad idea so that these types of issue branding tricks can't get past the public.

All that being said, I'm not sure that much of the electorate can be educated in this way, which probably does account for the success of this sort of thing.

Not to get to OT with politics, but another important part of the "Republicans are better at messaging" thing is that in general conservative positions tend to be very simple, e.g.

"drill for more oil" vs. "if we create a market for greenhouse gas emissions we can incentivize a market-based transition to a cleaner...."

"get tough on crime" vs. "focusing on incarceration ratherthan rehabilitation for certain classes of crimes actually increases crime by decimating minority communities and perpetuating a cycle of...."

"the government is bloated" vs.

Etc.

(And you never throw the baby out with the bath water!)

"SOPA is Internet Mutilation"

Here's the analogy I tweeted a couple weeks ago: "SOPA is the equivalent of allowing Disney to shut down a restaurant because a customer drew Mickey Mouse on a napkin."

I think anyone can recognize the injustice in that.

The shoplifting analogy seems more immediate and straight-forward to me. I understand that the shoplifting analogy equates piracy with theft but the distinction isn't really all that relevant to SOPA. Uncle Art probably equates piracy with theft anyway, so why fight the battle on two fronts?

One final point on this, by indirectly conceding the piracy/theft point you're less likely to step out of alignment with Uncle Art thus making it easier for him to agree with everything else you say. :)

P.S. I know we're all probably focusing too much on that killer soundbyte but I do think it was the missing ingredient. :)

If we abstract analogies too far, I worry that people will ignore them. I tried to leave Uncle Art with very few dots to connect by only changing the "host" business in my analogy.

The struggle I have with metaphors like yours is that it doesn't accurately describe piracy (because it's not the same as theft). This feels a bit disingenuous, but definitely makes for a great soundbyte.

It's a catch-22: the thoughtful, reasonable explanation of why it's a terrible idea will never get through to anyone except the people who already know.

I think a very accurate, yet simple metaphor would be something like:

Imagine this: If a man sings a Lady Gaga song in a park, then Universal Music Group will be able to close the park.

(Turn it into: "If a girl sings a Lady Gaga song in her school, then Universal Music Group might ask to close the school." and you may win every mother's support =P )

Or also: If a thief tells someone where he left a stolen wallet, government may close the buidling where the talk took place.

PS: Hi everyone, I'm from Argentina, but I really care about SOPA because it may set a very bad precedent in Internet legislation. Right now, in a lot of countries, this kind of bill would make the proponent look like someone come from Iranian or Chinese government. A fascist person looking for a way to censor the Internet. But if this bill passes, a GLOBAL consequence will be that politicians in other countries (like Argentina, in my case) will say: "Look, this law was approved in the USA. And they care about Freedom of Speach, so, it's not a big deal. -End of story-". And of course, they will use laws like this, to censor much more than just piracy. I dont want to sound fatalistic, but if this bill passes... well, we can start saying goodbye to the Internet as we know it.

And the best Company X I can think of is a sports franchise. (A customer base that is too large to monitor in real time, and that forms a community that would get shut down along with the business.) So what are Y and Z? I don't think they even have to differ from the reality. "Imagine if the government shut down the Boston Red Sox because one of its fans was handing out ripped Beyonce CDs." Or maybe the fan should be selling fake Rolexes, since that probably actually happens.

What is happening in many cases is the Boston Red Sox gave the guy selling the Rolexes a booth to sell them in, and directed people searching for "Rolexes" to his booth. The Red Sox hung up ads along the way and made money from all the people who walked past those ads on their way to get Rolexes. Someone reported those Rolexes stolen, so the Red Sox kicked the guy out with no penalty to the guy or the Red Sox, and then let some other fake watch seller setup shop in the same booth. This kept happening for years, and Rolex had to lay off 4000 people, while the Red Sox made a killing.

SOPA is like a law that would allow your local bar to be shut down if some of its customers meet there to swap pirated Music and Films, only the bar is website on-line.

Imagine you are a shop owner and someone writes something offensive on the outside of your building without you even knowing about it. This bill would allow the government to shutdown your store before you even knew the writing existed.

Today we already have in place a mechanism to notify the store owner, but SOPA changes that. It makes it possible to shut down entrepenuers, the store owners and wealth creators on the internet, before they even have a chance to get started helping to revitalize the American economy.

"But how would you not notice someone graffitied your wall?"

I dig this analogy: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3426990

I was picturing an outside wall with the shop owner inside all day behind the counter. The Mickey Mouse one is more concise though.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3427835

If the analogy is somewhat askew, but still suitable, just beginning it with "A _crude_ analogy would be ... " should amend that.

Either way, I do not believe that the faults in analogy would be any real disadvantage in a debate. Here's why:

• Old Grandpa would not be tech-savvy enough to notice the flaw at all, but he would still understand the intended message of the analogy

• The knowledgeable people that support you would understand what you really mean, and either way would have no interest in pointing out flaws in your arguments

• The knowledgeable people that oppose you (e.g Hollywood) would not want to point out the flaw for anything in the world, because then they would have to concede that piracy is not theft (a notion they are working very hard on establishing).

But if you want a more fitting analogy, how about something were people plan illegal activities in the store, instead of shoplifting? The police finds out that some customers have been discussing smuggling in a toystore that you own - the whole store gets shut down without anyone contacting you first.

Most older people seem to think piracy=stealing, and I suspect any argument designed to make a distinction will probably just steel their resolve.

The only way to explain how its bad is to latch onto examples of things that were made possible by the DMCA, and would no longer be possible under SOPA. So I would focus on internet stuff most people DO know about. Basically what you said about reddit, but applied to even more mainstream 2.0 sites. The obvious ones-

"If SOPA had been in place, youtube would never have existed, and if SOPA passes, youtube will probably shut down."

"If SOPA had been in place, WIKIPEDIA could easily have been shut down for something as simple as a user uploading a picture of a celebrity for their entry"

Those sites are big enough that they're known even by older people. At the very least they've heard about them. And if not you can talk about how amazing they are to warm them up.

Then, you can explain that wikipedia has millions and millions of entries by tens of thousands of people, and if the laws are that brittle and unforgiving, collaboration on that scale simply becomes impossible.

It's true indeed that this wouldn't be helpful for your Uncle Art.

Since shoplifters use roads to make their getaway, SOPA would have us set up roadblocks to catch all the thieves.

Could we catch more thieves by setting up roadblocks? Of course! So why don't we? For the same reasons SOPA would be bad law: we don't stop and search people in roadblocks (4th amendment prevents unreasonalbe search and seizure). Also, as a practical matter, roads, like DNS, are shared resources and the collateral damage to transportation (and internet routing) would be massive.

Using an analogy to aid understanding can seriously backfire when your opponents make fallacious arguments from analogy, because the audience doesn't actually understand the issue so they go with whatever the analogies makes believable.

I like the analogy, but it's off by a mark. "If someone leaves stolen goods in your store, this bill allows the government to shut down your store." would be a closer match, but misses a nuance.

"If someone post a notice advertising stolen goods on the community noticeboard in your store, this bill allows the government to shut down your store." would be even closer, but is a little harder to grok.

Prostitution is illegal in most states. SOPA is nearly equivalent to shutting down a bar because somebody went into the bathroom and scrawled "For a good time, call XXX-XXXX" on the wall.

- SOPA is bad for websites that rely on user-generated-content (and entrepreneurs like him)

- We (i.e. tech community) intimidated GoDaddy and forced them to back away from their support for SOPA

- One guy made a million dollars by requesting donations on PayPal instead of demanding payments from all users. This is a great example of innovation. The private sector should innovate like this guy (i.e. they should rely on business models that request payments, not require payments)

I realize that SOPA has zero support on HN and that my criticism of Alexis' interview-responses won't be popular. However, imo, a better approach to win public support would be to come up with specific solutions for the copyright problem and also acknowledge that copyright holders do have some legitimate concerns.

As Alexis said that's a problem for their industry. It's quite a false flag to say that the tech sites need to come up with a solution. Additionally, DMCA is already one solution.

We aren't for piracy, we're just aware of how futile trying to legislate against it is. I think we can make a case for this that articulates the genuine problem and still resonates with the average American.

The types of solutions that are possible are the types they are least inclined accept. Piracy is not killable without taking away the ability to communicate privately and probably not even then. Soviet attempts merely lead to Samizdat, in spite of going to extreme lengths to track people down. Also, prior to the internet, copyright infringement was widespread over sneakernet. Attempts to control that via technical means merely taught a generation of kids how to crack software.

That's not to say there are no solutions. William Patry has a new book about copyright reform. There are new ways of doing business. For example, iTunes proved successful, in spite of the fact that anyone who wanted to could have downloaded the same songs for free. None of those things are stuff they want to hear, though. They don't want to change. They don't think they should have to change. But reality has the last word and reality has no qualms about being unfair.

Now, the evidence points to the fact that downloaders are also the biggest buyers of CDs and DVDs. If you look at it that way, there have been no lost revenues, and in fact the entertainment industry has benefited immensely from free downloading, which has helped it to reach a much broader market.

The main problem with SOPA is that it is not possible to solve a market problem with legislation. Copyright infringement is a market problem, and markets are a lot more effective in delivering solutions than Governments. Consequently, SOPA will utterly fail to prevent copyright infringement, resulting in even MORE draconian laws sometime in the future.

Specific to the problem of music and film is that these markets are highly regulated oligopolies that use their market power to engage in price fixing. Unlike efficient markets, in which there are a range of different prices, the music and film markets only have two prices: Idiotically expensive and free (illegal).

Personally, I would LOVE to pay $1 per episode to watch my favourite HBO series at a time, and in a place of my own choosing. Sadly I cannot. Hence, I either don't watch it at all, or I obtain it by 'other' means. Monopolies/oligopolies only offer one price, and they are free to gouge their customers as long as they can prevent any competition in the market.

In other words, SOPA is NOT about preventing piracy (because that is a hopeless cause, much like the war on drugs), but about protecting the music and film industries illegal, anti-competitive price fixing practices (by way of preventing any other production/distribution of that type of media). Illegal price fixing is a small price that all Governments will gladly pay, as music and film support the propaganda/mythology creation industry of Government.

The simplest solution to prevent piracy would be to open the music and film markets to competition, but that is exactly what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to prevent.

This is the problem with how these bills are named.

SOPA stands for "Stop Piracy Online Act". I.e., how can you be against something that stops theft?

It would have a completely different mainstream reaction if it were called the "Censor the Internet Act" or "Stop Free Speech Online Act".

I like to use the following: "A person tells the government that they saw a TV in the local pawn shop which is really theirs. They never asked the pawn shop owner for it back and they have no reason to suspect the pawn shop owner knows it is stolen. The government will then shut down the pawn shop without even talking to the owner first or having significant proof that the item was really stolen. Every phone book will be required to remove the pawn shop's phone number from it and maps will not be allowed to show the pawn shop. The pawn shop can then attempt to get their store back from the government but if it turns out that the item really was stolen then the government will not return it." In the analogy the pawn shop is a website, the owner of the item is the copyright holder, the item is copyrighted content, and the removal of the phone number and map info is dns-delisting and search-engine de-indexing.

I think the above analogy holds up fairly well and clearly demonstrates the ridiculous measures SOPA goes to. It's also much more easily understandable by non-tech-savvy people. Please tell me if it is not accurate in some way or is unclear.

Edit: If you want to add some sympathy, replace pawn shop with Salvation Army and TV with pair of jeans.

Technically the store isn't shut down it's only removed from the phonebook. At this point the analogy breaks down as that doesn't sound as drastic at all. However, on the web, being removed from DNS would be a death sentence to legitimate sites but ironically (and tragically) not for sites dedicated to copyright infringement.

A car is used as a getaway vehicle in a robbery so the government goes after the car manufacturer.

A safety deposit box contains an illegal item, so the bank gets shut down.

While visiting my parents for Christmas, I scoffed when we drove past a car with a Lamar Smith bumper sticker (they live in TX). My parents asked me why I didn't like him; he was a stand-up representative as far as they knew. I mentioned SOPA and how horrible it is and they both drew a blank...turns out they had never even heard of SOPA. I was shocked since they watch the local and national news almost daily and discuss any story they see regarding technology/the internet with me.

Actually, it's more like, if the government gets a tip that someone shoplifted in your store, the government can instantly shut your store down for a long period of time while it gets investigated.

"If a store in a mall sells counterfeit goods, the entire mall gets shutdown"

She's just teasing - she's the one who invited me on as their tech contributor in the first place: http://search1.bloomberg.com/search/?content_type=all&pa...

I don't believe anyone should be judged on their attire, but if it'll get some people to listen, so it goes.

agree with what other people said about tightening up talking points - wouldn't hesitate to give specific examples about your own companies and the services people use that would be turned off if someone does something stupid, reviews, social networking sites etc.,

as other people said, would try to focus your attention on the interviewer and the camera like they're two friends you're engaging, avoid looking around into space.

good camera presence, good job!