SOPA -- in Canada it's our turn

If you value your digital freedoms and you live in Canada, it's time.

Ireland has already fallen but the rest of Europe is resisting ACTA and even America is taking a second look at it after SOPA and PIPA were stopped in their tracks there. Now it's our turn.

Monday is the beginning of final hearings on Bill C-11 which has in the last stages turned draconian.

Michael Geist's page (click here) tells you what you need to know. I live in James Moore's riding now and so he'll hear from me from both directions -- but I think my e-mail address is on his spam source list. He doesn't reply to me -- that's how a member of parliament rolls in the digital age, I guess. Here's what you should do:

1. Find your MP here (ou ici).

2. Write a polite note expressing your opposition to pre-emptive site blocking, expanded enabler definitions, broad protections for the companies that exploit artists, warrantless subscriber list handovers -- all coupled with a higher iPod tax. And send it individually to the e-mails listed in Michael Geist's page (committee members and ministers) as well as to your own MP.

Just to be sure they get it, write it out on paper, address an envelope and send it to them in Canada WITHOUT A POSTAGE STAMP (for parliamentary mail, that works!) -- but our postal system isn't fast enough to get it to them before Monday's opening.

3. Sign, for instance, the online petition at OpenMedia.ca

4. Do creative things that are outside the control of the corporate gatekeepers of culture.

5. Spread the word, and resist the feeling of impending doom. Keep calm and carry on.