Please, sign this petition to get South Africa to declare corrective rape a hate crime.

Also, please signal boost this if you can.

Thank you.

If you haven't heard, the BBC decided to interview a Christian who supports the execution of gays to comment on Sir Elton John's baby with his civil Partner David Furnish.

They are now defending this action, saying that it was required to 'balance' the coverage.

mercury_phoenix has sent a letter to the BBC in protest and sparkindarkness  has summed up the WTF far better than I ever could, so all I'm going to say is that having this asshat comment on a gay couple having a baby is offensive, disgusting, homophobic and generally makes me want to stop the planet so that I can get off.  

This is not a question of 'balance', BBC, this is a question of human rights, freedoms, and dignity, three topics that you obviously are as versed in as I am in Sanskrit. 

Everything you ever wanted to know about dating a sex worker.  Pass it on, please.

Today is World AIDS Awareness Day.  Here are some links to those whose posts on the subject said everything I could ever wish to say.

sparkindarkness voices rage at those who gloat over those who die from AIDS and ignore those who have to live with it.

eumelia reminds me of what it was like to grow up in the 80's with AIDS as a 'gay disease'.  I think I first heard of it on "Life Goes On", myself.

rm reminds all of us of the privilege of those who still ignore this epidemic or act as though this issue is dead or solved. 

Signal boost this if you can, please.

There's a post about this at the Huffington Post as well.  This man deserves a medal. 

ETA: If you watch to the end, it gives his facebook ID.  I wrote him a note of support.

I just picked this entry up from darth_eldritch who picked it up from metafandom at Anti-Acta. You can copy and paste from this page, or use the easy cut and paste box at the botton of the  Anti-Acta page.




ACTA stands for Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This is an international agreement that is meant to protect intellectual properties and help combat the business of counterfeit goods and piracy on a global level. Given how prevalent and easy piracy is online, it would seem that this move would be inevitable and you can't really say it's wrong to combat something that basically amounts to theft, can you?

However you feel about piracy, I do think there's one bit of information that especially relevant to fandom: It will make copyright infringement a criminal offense.

The state of fandom in the US is very much a legal-grey area. There are people that will argue fanworks are considered transformative works and can be considered 'fair use', and there are also people that will argue that the use of intellectual property is not transformative enough and thus fanworks are copyright infringement. Either way, there has not been any legal case in the US that has set hard and fast rules on the legality of fandom, so those debates are based on the interpretation of currents laws that were meant to deal with more blatant cases of copyright infringement instead of cases of fans playing around with the source material and sharing their work with others.

But that is only within the US and, if it goes into affect, ACTA will have the ability to go above and beyond the US courts with their own definition of what could be considered "copyright infringement". If a US court were to declare fanworks 'fair use'? The enforcers of ACTA would be able to ignore that and you could get find yourself with a criminal record for your Mieu/Van epic.

That does sound a lot like overly paranoid talk doesn't it? It does sound quite a lot like "The governments of the world are after fandom, oh noes! /tinfoil hat" doesn't it?

With the information available, or especially the disturbing lack of information available, ACTA could very well go into effect as something that could mark fandom as a potentially illegal activity. LJ has already taken cautious actions in regards to fandom in the past and they still engage in the censoring of fandom communities (with the adult flagging of communities like merlinslash ), and ACTA could give them reason to try and remove fandom communities entirely -- and they wouldn't be the only site on the internet to have reason to do so.

But all of that is just how it might affect fandom. There are plenty of other reasons to worry about ACTA as well. (And if you need to check, this forum post includes links to relevant articles. Do check the forums if you can as there's even more information there, as well as organization for protesting.)

ACTA is still in the negotiation phases so there is the potential that it will end up being something harmless. However, given that it's still being discussed in secret for the sake of "national security" (over a treaty to fight piracy on behalf of companies, not the average citizen) then it's quite possible that ACTA could become something very dangerous.

It's best to make sure the worst doesn't happen.

If you'd like to help right now, you can open http://www.anti-acta.com/reload.php in another tab or window and allow it to refresh. This should help put anti.acta.com on the top of Google's search and help spread awareness.

More information about protesting will be coming up, most likely in the forums. The dates are currently October 29th for the US (before the elections on November 2nd) and November 5th for everyone. If you're interested, make sure to keep either of those days free.

Seen on rm's most recent "Sundries", the meme that's going around the internet "I Write Like"   The answer is either a white man or (far less likely) a white woman.  More info here and here. 

I was actually thinking about doing that one just for fun, sigh... 

I've been speaking offline to several other people about the SPN race!face.  As we spoke, I began to wonder if perhaps some of this energy that we're all using to think about how a racist story came to be written and how to prevent them from being written in the future could be used to actually try and help the people of Haiti, who were the ones that the author exploited for her story.

So I've rounded up the following links to articles about what the people of Haiti are still suffering, as well as to organizations who are still helping:

No Shelter

US Senate report says that Haiti rebuilding has stalled

Child rescued from Haiti rubble is orphaned again

Haiti Earthquake - how to help

Help Haiti Now

American Red Cross

Haiti Earthquake Relief - how you can help

This is not a comprehensive list by any stretch of the imagination, so if any of you have personal experiences with helping the people of Haiti, please share it and any links that you may have, either to stories on what the people of Haiti are still going through or to other organizations who are still helping there.  Also, I do not personally endorse any of these organizations - these are simply from the results of a Google search.

I admit to being financially unable to do much to help when the Haitian earthquake occurred.  All I was able to do then was what I'm doing now, boosting the signal to the fact that they needed and still need help there.  Even if you can't give money, you can give your time and do the same, :).    

These are real human beings with real pain and suffering who were used as a backdrop for a romance.  Please, let's take our anger at this being done and turn it into something positive if we can. 

Thank you for your time and consideration. 

ETA: Please don't forget that the conversation is still going on here and here, :).