by Sylvia Bond
The other day, I was browsing the Internet, and I was not looking for porn. Honestly, I wasn’t. I was looking for seed catalogs. I was looking for knitting patterns. I was looking for canning jars and rag rugs and apple pie recipes. Okay, I was looking for porn, because, I mean, who isn’t? That’s what the Internet is for, right?
But then I came across this article written by David Segal in the Huffington Post. You can read the entire article, it’s not very long, but I found the concepts it presented shocking and somewhat daunting. Apparently, Congress is working on approving a bill that would allow the government, at the behest of media companies, to shut down websites that it doesn’t approve of. Strictly speaking, the bill, if approved, would be focused on shutting down the internet sites of people who counterfeit or pirate copyrighted material.
However, the article points out that the definition of what’s considered an “infringing activity” can be defined very broadly. So, yeah, it might behoove Disney to want to stop some overseas country from selling bootleg copies of Pirates of the Caribbean, and I couldn’t really blame them for that. But before you can imitate a raucous Wallace Beery with an “Arrrgh, Jim, lad, do ye come by here”, what’s to stop various media corporations from determining that your fan fiction story about pirates who happen to be in the Caribbean while doing their dastardly deeds is also an infringement? At that point, the media company can call up their pals in the government and slap you with a notice that says you’re on the blacklist. At that point, your internet server would be required by law to shut you down.
At least that’s the way I read it. And it freaked me out. It seems really far-fetched that a media company or even the government could censor as they see fit without paying attention to the First Amendment, doesn’t it? But this is how it starts. Today it’s some site Disney doesn’t like that gets shut down, tomorrow, it’s your blog or my blog, and then, it’s just a short hop to a variety of home search and seizures without a warrant, till they’re at your door, dressed in black suits and demanding that you turn over your hard drive.
If media companies are allowed to do what they please, and to censor those who displease them, and I can imagine that they’d be quite, quite displeased with fan fiction and fandom as a whole, what will happen to free speech in fandom? What will happen to sites like Pink Raygun, or archives of slash fan fiction (like for K/S or HP or S/H), or the Organization for Transformative Works, or fannish online communities like the SPN newsletter, and even FanFiction.Net? A lot of hard work goes into all of those websites, and archives, and communities. And even if fans don’t make any money, and aren’t “infringing” per se, I can see media companies getting irritated that people are enjoying freely created and distributed fan works instead of paying $10 a pop to see their stupid remake of a remake in the theaters.
So yeah. Freaking out here. I signed the two petitions (listed below) right away, and then I forwarded the information to Morgan Dawn, to see what she had to say about it. She’s a maven in fandom, the person you go to for technical advice when making a vid or for information about copyright laws, or a reference, because she has people. She knows people in paper hats and has a whole slew of connections; there’s nobody in fandom who doesn’t know Morgan Dawn. You do know her, right?
I asked Morgan to give me some feedback on how she feels a law like this might impact fandom. (Actually, even when I sent my query to her, I was pretty sure she already knew about it.) I was expecting her to soothe me with a lullaby about how the law was for faraway pirates and distant overseas corporations looking to make a buck from American movies and TV shows, and that fandom didn’t have a thing to worry about. Unfortunately, what she had to say didn’t calm me down at ALL.
Here’s what she had to say:
How would this bill impact fans? On the micro level, fans could find their LJs, fan fiction websites and archives censored by the federal government. Access to Megaupload, rapidshare, and dropbox services could be shut down nationwide. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation article points out, if this law had been passed 5 years ago, we might not have Youtube. And all of this could be done without due process, or any court findings of fact.
But let’s look at this at the macro level…in the past decade we’ve seen copyright law being used to silence political dissent in many countries. Even here in the US, “take down” notices are often used by political candidates seeking to divert their opponent’s message. Corporations use intellectual property as a tool to eliminate competition and to gag consumers who want to complain about defective products or poor service.
What we’re seeing on this bigger level is the subversion of copyright laws to further political agendas and corporate interests. We’re seeing that fair use and free speech rest on a similar foundation. And we’re seeing laws being passed that criminalize our children the moment they step onto the online playground to play with the toys purchased from those same corporations. And if you cannot see the parallels between playing with Barbies and writing fan fiction, rest assured the copyright owners do see it. This law is one more tool used to destroy creativity that cannot be metered and invoiced.
But because this law impacts so many core issues – free speech, fair use, commerce and international human rights, this is one situation where fans speaking up can have a multiplying effect. We’re not criminals. And we’re not alone.
I’m not subject to anxiety attacks, but what Morgan has to say made me sweat, especially after I read the Electronic Frontier Foundation article that she sent me.
As I understand it, if the bill passes, the Attorney General can censor any site, including YOURS, if he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t even need a reason if he thinks it might contain infringing material. But because “might contain infringing material” has been used before as a pretext; if he feels your blog or site or community doesn’t have wholesome American values, if he feels you used the F word one too many times, or if he doesn’t like the fact that you have pictures of nekkid people, you are done. Your site is shut down and voila, you are made to disappear from the Internet.
But wait, there’s more. If the bill passes, the government could target sites like MediaFire and Rapidshare that allow you to send the huge file containing pictures of your Aunt Sissy’s wedding, and places that allow you to share your vids, like youtube.com. In short, the government could shut down what makes the internet great and fun and a source of all that represents free speech.
If you say to yourself “oh, this can’t happen here,” let’s take a trip in the WayBack Machine with Professor Peabody to watch aspiring Senator McCarthy ranting and raving in all his glory about how even the whiff of Communist thoughts was grounds for revocation of the Bill of Rights. All of this has happened before, and if we don’t pay attention it will all happen again.
Are you sweating like I’m sweating? Then go sign the petitions listed below. Write your representative in congress and in the senate. Post links to the articles and petitions on your blog, your Live Journal account, and spread the word.
To help, sign these petitions:
Petition to Stop the Internet Blacklist
Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Petition
And if you’d like to write to the government:
Click here to find your senator
Click here to find your representative in congress
Arrrrrgh! Stop the madness!
Update: The bill has been delayed, for now, but your support and voice of protest is still important to stop it altogether.
Update #2: Morgan Dawn supplied this link to a case in Ohio demonstrating copyright infringement accusations run amok. Free speech and fair use are related and sit on similar foundations. Broad take-down notices will negatively effect citizens’ ability to take engage in protected speech.
Sylvia Bond is a ten-year technical writing veteran with too many degrees under her belt to count. She lives in Colorado, but does not ski, preferring instead to spend her money and time at the annual Great American Beer Festival, taking road trips across the United States, and reading historical fiction from the comfort of her fluffy green arm chair. She has been involved in fandom since 1993 and been writing fanfic since approximately 1993. What she finds most amazing about fandom (besides the open heartedness of fans and the sheer amount of creativity) is how visible fandom has become. “In my day,” she says, “we had to hide behind P.O. boxes to get fanfic. But nowadays, people wear t-shirts that shout their affiliation and share their shiny toys on the internet.” It’s a wonderful world.
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Sylvia Bond is a ten-year technical writing veteran with too many degrees under her belt to count. She lives in Colorado, but does not ski, preferring instead to spend her money and time at the annual Great American Beer Festival, taking road trips across the United States, and reading historical fiction from the comfort of her fluffy green arm chair. She has been involved in fandom since 1993 and been writing fanfic since approximately 1993. What she finds most amazing about fandom (besides the open heartedness of fans and the sheer amount of creativity) is how visible fandom has become. "In my day," she says, "we had to hide behind P.O. boxes to get fanfic. But nowadays, people wear t-shirts that shout their affiliation and share their shiny toys on the internet." It's a wonderful world. 
The thought of a world with no Janto fic fills me with dismay. Where will we read about Gaeta shipped with everything from the Old Man to an air conditioner (ok, probably not, but one of my friends insists you can find Gaeta/anything)?
Ok, we could probably survive without those but I agree it's a very scary possibility. There are already reasonable laws for removal of direct content violation, after all. I've even had to use it on my old sites to take down scrapers who did nothing but republish my content. Fair use and free speech are both completely different….and they're central to a lot of creative work. Off to sign now!
It would be awesomely hardcore to start mailing them out again….but this is the internet. We shouldn't even need listserves.
let's be fair here. There isn't anything wrong with someone trying to stop people who are stealing from them. It isn't an Orwelian tactic imo. Those sites, like rapidshare are conduits of mass piracy, and believe me I would know.
of course, something like this could be abused, so it would have to be constructed carefully.