if you like free speech, educate yourself and then call your senators RIGHT NOW.

Ok. We all know that online piracy is a problem, that it has limited independent growth and killed innovation in Hollywood. Something honestly does need to be done.

But SOPA and PROTECT IP are not the right things to do.

But unless you want your blog to be taken down for posting stuff like cat videos with copyrighted music playing in the background and your own self arrested for a felony (yes, for cat videos, seriously, READ THE BILL), watch this video and then CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES right away. Write an e-mail AND CALL THEM, because calling "counts more" in the grand scheme of things. We have to stop this bill now or the government and entertainment industry will be able to censor whatever the hell they want. Basically. Because the bill is written badly.

Please, please, please tell your f-lists about this and ask them to call their congresspeople as well. This is very, very, very serious and the first step towards a true police state. It limits free expression, and what's worse, pretty much eliminates due process, giving sole power to block, cancel and eliminate websites to the government without recourse for the website owner.

Call now. These bills -- PROTECT IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act -- are on the fast track and will be passed very soon. The more voices speak up against it, the more chance we have to keep the Internet the free and expressive place it has always been. These bills will not punish the real pirates; they will punish YOU and ME.

For putting up cat videos and forgetting to turn off the radio. You ready to go to jail for that?

Yeah.

another reason you NEED TO FIGHT THESE BILLS

If the SOPA and PROTECT IP bills are passed, every wedding videographer in the country could go to jail and our industry may cease to exist.

This isn't even about sync license issues. We can work around those and get licenses for stupid royalty free music, if absolutely necessary. This is about what the DJ plays as the new married couple are doing their first dance. Say authorities get a hold of it. Say the couple posts it online so their friends and family across the country can see their first dance. Say it's Beyonce's "Halo." Say my watermark is on it. All of this is common practice today. I didn't even actively put a copy of "Halo" onto the timeline -- just recorded what happened at the wedding, like videographers have been doing for over twenty five years.

You know, something like this.

The record companies could send both my couple and myself to prison for five years for doing that.

I think very few of us are willing to take the risk of hanging out in a federal penitentiary for five years because we wanted to make less than minimum wage taping weddings. Because my customers are pretty much done with disc-based media. They want computer files, flash drives, streaming. Can you imagine the wedding video of the future, with no sound at all -- whatsoever? Because the girls getting ready are singing along to their favorite songs on their iPod? Because I can't chance it that I might do time because they are singing?

Just think about that.