Our stance on SOPA and PIPA acts

This is how our next mail campaign might look.

Professional photographers take copyrights and intellectual property very seriously.  Part of our job is policing the use of our images and whether those uses have been compensated or not.  If an images is stolen, we have the right to request the user to stop using it or invoice them for the infringement.  We’re very invested in our intellectual property rights and any legislation that can help protect those rights is usually met with open arms.

SOPA and PIPA are different.  Drafted to help curb media piracy, the acts would give large media companies the ability to request domain hosts to monitor and shut down offending sites that might be hosting any of their non-licennsed intellectual property content.  Despite the intentions of the lawmakers, these acts appear to be much too vague in their enforcement, and allow non-government entities the right to control how the internet is accessible to the public.

So despite our stance against piracy and non-licensed use of copyrighted material, the current versions of SOPA and PIPA are much to broad in their scope and powers.  We’ve emailed our Senator and representatives, and you should do the same, after doing your own research and coming to your own conclusions.  You can read more about the acts here.  You can find our how to contact your representatives by entering your zip code at WikiPedia’s site.