YO. *claps hands*. IMPORTANT THING.

For those of you who might not want to bother clicking on the link without knowing what’s up, Ao3 has a legal team and there are three new potential issues out there looking to become Problems for those of us in USA fandom spaces. I won’t cover all the details because I am very bad at understanding legalese but basically-

1. there’s a Bill that just got past the House of Representatives that is called SHOP SAFE and it basically means that ya’ll can kiss your fan merch goodbye on places like ebay, etsy, patreon, etc. For obvious reasons that’s really bad, not just for those of us who want to buy cool fan merch made by fellow fans but for those of us who can’t find/hold a regular job for various reasons and need to pay rent by selling this sort of thing.

2. there’s a proposed bill called the EARN IT act that is supposed to help crack down on photography/posting of child porn, which obviously would be a good thing, but it’s worded *so loosely* that it means anti-lgbt+ lobbiests/other people could use it to crack down on lgbt+ artwork/photography and force searches of internet users’ private materials. Which obviously is a big no-no on the privacy front.

3. there is a new proposal that would force websites, including Ao3 and other fan posting sites, to try to filter out “copyright infringing material”. Ie your fanfic/art/etc. These measures wouldn’t take into account fair use material and like-

You’re on tumblr. You lived through the nsfw-filtering ai fiasco like the rest of us. Do you really want things like that and like Youtube’s brain dead copyright strike system to become the norm for other websites and fan spaces?

Seriously read the blog post for all the details including how to help slap sense into the people trying to push this stuff through if you live in the USA. Also go yell at your local senator/representative.

Also also please reblog this so that other people can also yell at the idiots who won’t leave our fan spaces alone.

@hamelin-born thought you might wanna know about this/reblog this too.