Lost Video Island

[Brooke]

We're hearing it from Senate offices, and we're hearing it from people who've been bombarding Washington with calls: The phones in the Capitol have been ringing off the hooks this week.

It's having an impact: just days ago Hollywood's head lobbyist was bragging about the dozens of Senate cosponsors of the legislation, but now he says that the bill has “a lot of hurdles” to overcome.

And then, last night, the movement to stop SOPA made national television, on the Colbert Report:

It's awesome. Colbert's parent company Viacom is one of the censorship bills' biggest supporters, and for the past week we've heard rumors of a media blackout-- that managers at top news networks are telling their producers not to cover SOPA. But now it's too big a story to ignore.

And let's be clear: this happened because of the work we've done together. The phonecalls you've made, the actions you've taken in protest, and the posts you've shared are what made this story pop.

Even the example Colbert and his guest use to capture why SOPA's so bad (that if it passes even Justin Bieber could go to jail, for the very videos that made him famous) started right here at Fight for the Future (see: Free Bieber). Everyone who signed that and made it go viral should be proud. In many ways this is a battle of ideas, and together we're winning.

Watch the Stephen Colbert video, and share it with friends and family who don't know about SOPA and PROTECT IP

Still, it's no time to rest on our laurels: We still hear that the Senate could vote on this legislation before Christmas. And even if our opponents are now willing to reconsider aspects of the bills, it's the parts we find most noxious that are most likely to stick around.

As if you need a reminder, those are the provisions that would let the government and corporations block your access to websites, make felons of people who post videos of unlicensed content online, and force sites that rely on user-generated content to start policing everything everybody uploads.

That'd jeopardize YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs -- and if you need evidence of just how important these tools have become, just look in the mirror. The viral, grassroots campaign we're waging together right now would be impossible if our opponents could simply shut down our sites. Let's make sure that never happens.

If you haven't already, please click here to join tens of thousands of other Internet users by calling your Senators this week and telling them to stand up for Internet freedom.

Do watch/share the Colbert clip, it's worth seeing.

And if any of you Reddit users agree--at your discretion, of course--show us some love.

Thanks everybody

--Holmes Wilson, Fight for the Future