vanessarama

See my icon? If Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) bills pass in the US, Dreamwidth and Livejournal - the entire sites - could potentially be taken offline for hosting icons, or fic, or fanvids, or animated GIFs. Without due process and with a lot of legal entanglement. This is not acceptable and it will not provide appreciable protection against real piracy.

Even if you, like I, am not in the US, you can help fight SOPA/PIPA.

You can petition the US State Department, which often speaks out against internet censorship in other countries, to speak out against the same thing happening in their own country.

You can spread the word, so that US citizens are informed and riled up enough to actively protest this travesty which their policymakers are trying to force upon the entire internet.

Consider that a massive number of copyright holders are opposed to the legislation; consider that Google and Wikipedia and many major sites are opposing it.

Read here what mathowie who runs Metafilter has to say about the expense and legal hassles he was forced to go to because an anti-piracy bot thought he was hosting a pirated file due to a shared file name. Multiply that by millions. The only people who win will be the lawyers.

And go to The Oatmeal for the best ever use of an animated GIF for educational purposes.

Public Service Announcement.

Fandom is a complex ecosystem with a clear, if not explicitly expressed, social contract. If you take, you give. You pay attention to people's requests and do your best to honour them, and in turn you understand that they will do the same for you.

People used to understand this. Why don't they understand it now?

Fuck me, dudes. Who else is with Telstra mobile and has recently changed their plan? If you are, check your account bloody carefully.

I found a list of charges on my phone from 'airG Gamers Gamers Chat'. I have no idea what this thing is. I never subscribed to it. I've never used it. I can't find it on my phone. But apparently I'm being charged 95 cents a day to use it. And checking the online forums brings up a shitload of other Telstra customers facing the same issue, going back to September LAST YEAR, and apparently they get the runaround from Telstra when they call claiming that they need to contact airG, AND the airG company is in North America so you can't even call them and blast the shit out of them.

WHITE HOT RAGE. Even more white hot when I see that there's an airG person on whirlpool, on the Optus forum this time, telling everyone that their kids or little brother must have subscribed to the service.

I DON'T HAVE TIME TO DEAL WTIH THIS CRAP.