Stop SOPA!

I normally don’t blog about things like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) here.  I figure the few readers I have want to hear about RPGs, comics, or other nerdy pursuits.  Today, I felt I had to make an exception.

I am not pro-piracy.  In fact, I believe strongly in voting with my dollars when it comes to the things I like.  I want the people who make these things to get paid so that they will continue making them.

I can even understand the frustration of the people who watch their intellectual property get pirated over and over.  While I disagree with him strongly on SOPA, comic book writer and novelist Peter David sums up this frustration over at his blog.

None of this justifies a bad law like SOPA though.  SOPA assumes guilt without proof.  I don’t want an Internet where the mere accusation of piracy can get a website removed from DNS servers, effectively erased from the web.  Under the current Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) companies like Warner Brothers have issued takedown notices for files they have never looked at based solely on the filename.  Do we really want to make it easier for this sort of thing to happen?

So I urge you you to contact your congressman and tell them you are opposed to SOPA.  Sites like Stop American Censorship make it easy to get this contact information.  Congress is supposed to represent the will of the people, not that of corporate lobbyists, but it is up to us to let them know what our will is.

Stop SOPA!

Google Chrome Comic Book art by Scott McCloud

Not sure if any of you have checked out Google Chrome yet.  It is basically a new open source web browser with several innovations like a privacy mode and multi-threaded tabbed browsing.  I downloaded it today and have been using it almost exclusively since then.  Which is pretty impressive considering how much I love Firefox!

Why try out a new browser when I was happy with my old one?  Was it because of the technical merits? Well, I am impressed with some of the technology behind it.  Honestly though, it is the fact that they created a comic book justification for it.

I mentioned that Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics changed the entire way I look at the medium of comics.  One of the things Scott bemoans in Understanding Comics is that comic are pretty much seen as only capable of producing stories about adolescent power fantasies (i.e. superheroes).  Manga shows us that there is nothing inherit in the comic medium that prevents us from telling all-manner of stories.  Instead of just superheroes, why not write police dramas, romances, historical fiction, situation comedies, and even non-fiction?  Seriously, a lot of potential is being wasted.

Scott even mentions how the potential of comics as an instructional tool is often overlooked.  An example of comics being used that way are the "comics" in airplanes that explain how to put on air masks, assume crash position, etc.  Sadly, comics are almost never used this way.

When I saw Google had released a comic book about why they created Chrome, I was very intrigued.  Within the first couple of pages I thought, "Wow, whoever did this certainly read Understanding Comics".  I am embarrassed to say I did not recognize that Scott McCloud was actually doing the art for the comic until I was half-way in!

Since Google sent some work to one of my comic creating heroes, I figured the least I could do was try out their product.

I have to admit it is way better than I expected for a beta product.  Heck, it's better then some mature browsers.  Like Safari.

Yeah, you heard me Apple.  Watch your back.