Riot Nrrd

So! You might have noticed that there are a lot of U.S. websites blacked out or featuring censor bars today. In case you haven’t heard, there’s a bill called SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate, and a lot of internet folks are coming out against them because, besides being ineffective in fighting piracy, they are a potential threat to free speech on the internet. You can learn more in this video. I’m taking part because, honestly? If someone sent a link of my site to Rupert Murdoch I am SURE he would find at least a dozen visual representations of shit he owns. The bills are designed to stop piracy, but the concern is that they’re worded broadly enough that it’s hard to define what counts as “infringing”, and sites that are found to be infringing can just be cold shut down. I’m not hosting or linking to pirated videos (though if someone in a comment thread did, that’s enough), but what kind of precedence is this setting? Are screenshots a threat to his intellectual property rights? Song covers? Fan works? Links to these things? Even if he’s not in the right to have my site shut down, what the hell kind of fight would I be able to put up?

People are talking a lot about the impact on social networks, but it’s also easy to see how SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP Act, which is ITSELF an acronym, though I couldn’t tell you for what, but calm down with the acronyms Senate bros) might favor big business and disadvantage independent artists. How many webcomic creators that you know and love have, at some point, drawn a character they don’t own into their comics? How many artists you follow online have drawn inspiration from their favorite television shows, comics or movies? And how many of these creators would have the money or time to put up any kind of legal fight against a company like Disney?

Right now, thanks to pressure from the White House, SOPA has been “shelved”, but PIPA is still moving forward, and it would be great if a big show of opposition could get them both trashed for good. You can sign the petition under the video, or this one from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I also found this list of where various congresspeople stand. Contact your representatives and tell them why you’re against these bills and they should be too, or thank them for their public opposition.

Ok! Truly, thanks for reading.

EDIT: It’s unclear to me how extreme the abuse of this thing would have to be for fan works to be considered infringing, so I may have read into the threat here wrong. I don’t want anyone to think I’m misrepresenting the text of the bill, these are just my legitimate concerns for the potential for abuse in the future if we grant corporations this level of power. (But I’m pretty confident that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t understand what the bill means, either, sooo.) Reddit has a good comprehensive post on the specific details of the bill and the threats it currently presents.