infuriatedHow has the blackout impacted me? This is my morning routine:
1. Get up, get ready for work.
2. Internet! FOREVER! Okay, for about fifteen minutes. First up, web comics.
3. Second, toy collecting sites.
4. Thirdly, io9 and Television Without Pity.
5. Wikipedia, to both check facts about things I'm writing (do parrots eat meat?) and to confirm which shows I follow will have new episodes tonight (for some reason I trust Wikipedia more than I trust the TV Guide site).
This is my morning routine after SOPA:
1. Get up, get ready for work. Because everything else is blocked, removed, or under attack.
This is a broad-strokes "protection of copyright" that actually goes so far above and beyond the call of duty that it's like getting a pack of trained attack basilisks to keep those damn kids off your lawn. Basilisk crap is going to wind up getting everywhere, but who cares? No more kids on the lawn!
Now, I am a creator of things, and I appreciate and enjoy making money off of them. It enables me to do silly little things like keeping the power on and feeding the cats. I appreciate and enjoy it even more when people don't steal from me. But you know what doesn't steal from me? Book reviews. But SOPA could make it a crime to post book covers or quote inside text, something my favorite book reviewers often do. Hell, SOPA could make it a crime for me to maintain my own website, since I use art that is technically under copyright to either my publishers or the original cover artists, and if someone wanted to be a real dick, they could report me for posting pieces of my own books.
You know what else doesn't steal from me? Fanfic. The legal arguments about fanfic and fan art are huge and complicated and a matter for another day, but I can honestly say that I have received email from people saying "I encountered this piece of fic about your work and so I read the originals." I haven't received email saying "I encountered this piece of fic about your work and it was so bad that now I am stealing all your shit forever." Whatever impact fan works may have on my sales, and whatever the legality behind transformative fan work, it isn't stealing from me. It isn't internet piracy. But under SOPA, you could totally rat out fanfic archives and most of DeviantArt for violating copyrights, and watch the pretty, pretty fires as they burned.
Piracy pisses me off. I don't feel that I have wasted my time when I got upset about piracy and copyright. But there is such a huge difference between "I will now protect you from piracy" and what these bills will do that isn't even funny. Don't believe me? I mean, why should you? I am, after all, not a lawyer or anything like that. But I do have access to the internet, and to the smart people it currently contains, the ones I am allowed to communicate with freely and without fear of being slapped for violating a law that seems a bit too broadly written.
John Murphy would like to talk to you about SOPA. Better yet, he does it very intelligently and coherently, with good, clean information.
Still not convinced? The folks at reddit have actually dissected the text of SOPA, and point out some terrifying potential abuses. If you want to get your legal language on, this is the place to go.
And the ever-fabulous and profane Chuck Wendig has also pointed out some of the major issues with these anti-piracy measures. Like me, he's approaching it from a writer's perspective. He just says "fuck" more.
You know what? Fuck SOPA. Fuck PIPA. Fuck the idiots who think that they can control the internet. And fuck them twice for forcing today's internet blackout, because I still don't know whether parrots eat meat.
Fuckers.
January 18 2012, 20:43:09 UTC 5 years ago
January 18 2012, 20:55:43 UTC 5 years ago
I know for sure that macaws, african greys, amazons, and most (if not all) parrots eat meat or at least can. I own 2 macaws, as I said, and let me tell you, they go batshit for it. It's very exciting for them to get some meat, practically orgasmic. Their eyes pin in excitement, they make happy little sub-vocalizations, and they rip into it with wild abandon. [They do the same for grapes. One of mine actually peels the grape with his beak. The other one punctures the skin and then tongues the flesh to suck out the juices.]
If you're writing zombie parrots, I love you more, btw. Just saying.
Watch videos on how the ones with tails as long as their bodies walk/run (macaws are a great example) -- it is very velociraptor like, but if the macaw is goofy (like my blue and gold), they look like the dorky velociraptor that is maybe serving as a distraction/bait while the others dart out and attack the hapless victim. I could see a zombie parrot pack....
January 18 2012, 21:01:37 UTC 5 years ago
January 18 2012, 21:21:02 UTC 5 years ago
...Have we told you enough lately how much we love you? :)
January 18 2012, 21:31:31 UTC 5 years ago
January 18 2012, 21:54:10 UTC 5 years ago
January 18 2012, 23:41:05 UTC 5 years ago
January 18 2012, 21:56:29 UTC 5 years ago
...*ALL THE SHINY EYES*
January 18 2012, 22:06:49 UTC 5 years ago
http://www.newzealandatoz.com/index.p
"They embrace each day with curiosity, mischief, and the desire to eat,"
and
"She figured out how to break open the lock to her cage. One night she got loose and entered the keeper's quarters and the kitchen. She ate everything edible, totally destroyed a down sleeping bag, and carried coffee mugs to the edge of the counter and dropped them to the floor, reducing the mugs to a pile of pottery shards. Another night she escaped and methodically opened 20 other cages containing dozens of other species of birds that were part of special breeding programs. In the morning, when we came to work, we couldn't believe our eyes. Most of the birds were gleefully zooming around in areas that had been taboo. Lucy played it innocent. She and her mate had gone back to their cage and shut the door behind them, but the telltale broken lock gave away who was behind the breakout."
Coolest (and possibly scariest) griffins ever...
January 19 2012, 00:15:25 UTC 5 years ago
January 19 2012, 00:21:03 UTC 5 years ago
Although... thinking that griffin's are usually based on eagles, have you heard of the Haast's Eagle? It's an extinct NZ bird (lost a few centuries ago) that was the largest eagle ever existed anywhere in the world, with a diet of moas (also extinct, somewhat like emus/ostriches). That could make a good cross with a thylacine as well...
As a Kiwi/Aussie, I love seeing my species make it into books. It's surprisingly rare we get featured, even when written by Aussies... I was looking for urban fantasy set in Australia and am not having much luck. :(
January 19 2012, 00:59:36 UTC 5 years ago
January 19 2012, 01:08:47 UTC 5 years ago
I did notice a couple that were more paranormal romance, which isn't really my thing, and I love my australian authors (like Fiona Mcintosh and Juliet Marillier and John Marsden and Victor Kelleher), but Taronga is the only really awesome fantasy/scifi book set in Sydney I know - If you don't want to clutter Seanan's lj, my email address is little_phoenixia@yahoo.com.au
January 19 2012, 03:14:48 UTC 5 years ago
Also, check out Trent Jamison's Death Works trilogy, from Orbit.
There's going to be an InCryptid book set in Melbourne, but that's not for a little bit yet, I'm afraid. (Book four, assuming the series does well enough to get that far.)
January 19 2012, 21:23:41 UTC 5 years ago