That already happened. From the IDL release on March 19th:

  Dear Internet Defense League member,

  Last year, right on the heels of our historic victory against SOPA, a piece 
  of really nasty legislation almost passed that would have radically undermined 
  online privacy.

  It was called CISPA.  And it raced through the US House of Representatives, 
  passing before any of us had a chance to react.  We stalled the bill in the 
  Senate, but now CISPA is back, and we don't want to make the same mistake twice.  
  Before there is *any* movement on the bill, we want to send a strong message 
  to Congress that CISPA shouldn't pass.  

  That's why we're partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to launch 
  an Internet Defense League action starting tomorrow, Tuesday March 19th.  

  Can you participate? If so, get the code for your site here: http://members.internetdefenseleague.org

The problem is that online activism seldomly accomplishes anything. But a more pessimistic point of view might also suggest that we don't stand a chance against this, because this shit will come back every year until it passes. It will pass in pieces because they have to hack it up into easily swallowable packets, but it will pass. Online privacy and freedom goes the same way as net neutrality, sadly.

I'd love to have a meaningful conversation about how we can make online activism actually have an effect on Congress. Any takers?

It seems to me like we need a new generation of tools that allow people to take actions that matter. Beyond relatively poorly designed click-to-call your congress person tools, we really don't have much right now. I think with better software we can do a lot more, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that'll look like.

I'd love to hear HN's thoughts.

I like your thinking!

I have a few ideas.

First and foremost I think the internet needs to focus on one issue at a time. Once you divide the activists the whole message gets blurred and no one cares. (Case in point, look at occupy wall street, what exactly did the protesters want??)

Point two, it can't involve petitions, those are stupid and counter-productive.

Point Three, activists like to be involved. Have a way for people to earn points contacting their representatives or helping the site in other ways and perhaps be able to use those points to vote on what issue to tackle next, or the actions presented for an issue?

Really I'm picturing something like a cross between reddit and stack overflow geared towards political action. Power users can vote on issues, have meta discussions in the background, but normal users just see the one issue that's going on at the moment with a simple interface that explains the issue and has 1-3 meaningful actions they can take.

My thoughts for the 3 actions could be: Call your representative, Request a pre-addressed envelope be mailed to you so you can write a letter in your own words, or donate money to pay for mailing the pre-addressed letters to people.

Glad to see the HN community getting excited about this issue. In my professional capacity as the resident technologist at an activist-y non-profit, I have a few things to note:

1) Single issue organizations are quick to grow but hard to sustain. Once the first fight is over, how do you take your list and pivot to a new issue? People lose interest quickly unless there's a hook to keep them involved.

2) Petitions may seem silly, and many of them are, but some have actually had big successes. These are due more to the strategy behind them than the actual numbers; you have to find the right leverage point in the political process to make the numbers matter. They are also useful as signals to organizers that people are interested in an issue, even if they won't be successfully delivered.

3) Gamification in this space is hard. You're one step away from the "slacktivism" critique, and sliding ever closer with each point or badge you give out. For some examples of this being done well, see http://repurpose.workersvoice.org/

For the "3 actions you must take", the handwritten letter is probably the most impactful. Staffers tend to weight online signatures, phone calls, letters, and in person visits by increasing orders of magnitude of importance. Getting 100,000 signatures is now "worth" less than 1,000 letters, particularly as petition numbers continually increase.

> 1) Single issue organizations are quick to grow but hard to sustain. Once the first fight is over, how do you take your list and pivot to a new issue? People lose interest quickly unless there's a hook to keep them involved.

Instead of working to sustain single-issue organizations, a better strategy might be to reduce the friction to creating successful, short-term organizations in the first place. Something like an activist flash mob.

I agree with a lot of these points. I think it's tricky to focus on one thing at a time though, as that's not how things happen in the real world, and people are interested in different things - so keep active communities going around issue seems the best way forward to me.

Regarding the points system - I agree on that. Gamification might be a good way to keep people engaged.

And regarding actions, I'm working on that already. The pre-adressed envelope might be achievable in different ways too (type a letter, and we'll print and email it).

My first step is going to be to set up a http://discourse.org site for us to discuss. I do like the reddit model too, though it perhaps promotes sensationalism over actual content. That being said, it does seem to work quite well.

I think this generation and perhaps the one before has forgotten, or in the case of the previous, has never been taught that we employee these people. Without us they do not exist. It's regaining that mentality that will be the catalyst to having our freedom back.

It doesn't help that 'contacting your Congressperson' is code for 'being intercepted by some intern that will put your concern on a post-it note, which your representative will never see.'

I thought when activated it would black out all of the member sites. And I thought it had some big names like Reddit. But I don't remember anything special happening on March 19th.

It must really not be working if someone like me who reads tech sites every day didn't notice it?

The reason this doesn't work is because the blackout would have to be invoked again and again, and sites are reluctant to do this because it disgruntles users. Lobbyists on the other hand have no problem introducing this kind of legislation a few times a year. We're already seeing resistance wearing off, especially since they're trying to be more gradual and fuzzy about introducing legislation that threatens the core of the internet.

"If we let them persuade us we didn't actually make a difference, if we start seeing it as someone else's responsibility to do this work and it's our job to just go home and pop some popcorn and curl up on the couch to watch Transformers, well, then next time they might just win. Let's not let that happen"

Released where? I went to their webpage to find information on this, but I couldn't see anything. They said the call is out, but they only link to the member singup page, not actual information on the issue.

Yeah, it seems like the whole idea really got watered down somewhere along the line.

I don't really mind fighting the exact same shitty bill each year. Imagine if they start making new, shittier bills when their efforts fail!

Kind of late now, huh?

The "Cat Signal" was activated prior to this debacle as a means to urge netizens to contact their elected representatives and garner opposition to CISPA.

My elected representative voted no. Thank you Tulsi!