It is my birthday, ya'll! I took the day off of work, and have been using the "it's my day, damnit" excuse to sit at home reading and writing fanfic instead of doing anything productive. Which I feel good about.

I have a ton of LJ catching up to do (sorry friends!), but in the meantime, I have an important public service announcement:

Our fannish freedoms are in danger!

Ever watched a fanvid? Downloaded a fanmix? Enjoyed gazing longingly at a sexy manip? Well, I hope you enjoyed it, because we may not have the chance to do so for much longer. And not only are our fannish freedoms in jeopardy, but these happenings have worrisome implications for censorship, net neutrality, and other scary things. Bad, bad news.

I'm talking about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, which will not stop online piracy, but will cause a bunch of other really bad shit. Americans, this is obviously most relevant for us right now, but those who live outside the U.S., we need your help to raise awareness and take action, too. Cuz if they can get away with it here, you bet your sweet ass the entire internet will feel the impact.

Some background:

* Stop American Censorship has a great breakdown of the issues, including some neat videos and infographics. In short, SOPA would allow the US Government to block Americans from visiting websites. Let me say this again. The Government will be able to prevent you from accessing certain websites.

* It's not just bad for fandom, it's bad for the economy, bad for innovation, and a really, really bad precedent for censorship worldwide.

* Mainstream news outlets aren't covering it, because the companies that own them support SOPA. So it's up to the internet to mobilize opposition.

* Not convinced? Let Stephen Colbert break it down for you.


Okay, so what do you do?
Contact your Senator. Never done it before? It's easy. You can e-mail your Senator. You can snail-mail a letter. You can call them. Many times, they won't pick up, and you can just leave a message. If someone does pick up, you can tell the staffer that answers a) that you're a constituent and b) that you're calling to encourage your Senator to vote against SOPA. You can say why if you want, but you don't have to if you (like me) are terrified of human interaction. Even if you just call and tell them you want your Senator to vote against this bill, that's another checkmark in our column.

If you'd rather write, I've stolen from super-net-freedom-crusader nrrrdy_grrrl a letter you can crib to send to your Senator.

Senator,

After much research and consideration, I can only conclude that the SOPA bill is not the most effective way to protect intellectual property rights and thwart internet piracy. Rather, it makes legitimate online endeavors vulnerable to malicious litigation and censorship. It also opens up legitimate online businesses to litigious harassment by competitors and harms our thriving online economy.

There are more effective ways to protect the rights of industries plagued by internet piracy. SOPA is ill-considered and will harm not only myself but millions of other law-abiding [New Yorkers] who use the internet.

I urge you to represent our interests and not those of media conglomerates who are pushing this proposed legislation.

With much respect and admiration,
Your loyal constituent
[your name here]


Find contact info for your Senator here.

If you want to do more, Stop American Censorship has great ideas for further action, including petitioning the US State Department and "censoring" your own website in protest. You can also send a note to your Senator right from their website. Copy/paste the above, put in your location info and name, boom, done in under a minute.


Boost the signal
It'd be great if you could post something on your own journal about SOPA, to reach other folks in fandom who may not have heard about SOPA, or may not yet appreciate how really shitty this bill is.


Let's do this. I've seen fandom mobilize to raise money for Haiti, to condemn cyber-bullying, to rally around sick friends. Imagine if the sites on which we did all this were gone: shut down for copyright infringement. Are you sayin' hells to the no? Are you sayin' "Don't mess with fandom?" Yeah, that's what I thought.

Fandom powers activate! Go out there and do something! Drop a message here if you do, so I can update this post with tales of our impact.