EXGfilms.com is down today in protest of a very bad piece of legislation: HR 3261 (SOPA) and S 968 (PIPA). If you use the internet, these bills will negatively effect you. SOPA/PIPA will kill jobs and set a precedent for internet censorship within the United States.
Intellectual property law is, on the whole, arcane and overcomplicated, and as a filmmaker, it's something I think about a lot. I certainly don't want to have my work ripped off and redistributed for free without my consent, but I also don't want to live in a world ruled by a bureaucracy that expects all content creators to provide a paper trail proving that any work that I make is in no way derivative of any existing work. Not only is such a system deeply stifling, the notion that new works of literature, art, film, music are not and should not be derivative of existing work is utterly preposterous. SOPA and PIPA provide overzealous enforcement mechanisms for laws that simply no longer make sense. We need to reform our copyright system before we even consider laws of this magnitude.
We will return to our regular programming tomorrow. To find out more about SOPA/PIPA and for information on how to contact your representatives, pay a visit to the Electronic Frontier Foundation or americancensorship.org.