Last week I told you why Fractured Atlas is opposing SOPA and PIPA, a pair of bills in Congress that claim to protect the rights of artists but would be both ineffective at that goal and damaging to the technical fabric of the internet. We were the first major arts organization to take this stand, and we took some heat for it, but I believe we also moved the needle on our community’s understanding of these complicated issues.

For a few months now we’ve been tracking a couple of ostensibly artist-friendly bills in Congress that are designed to enhance the ability of copyright-holders to enforce their rights online by shutting down websites dedicated to piracy of intellectual property. Think MP3s, movies, and filesharing (and some more nefarious stuff, too, like Russian websites that sell complete digital albums for a few bucks and never pay the artists).

Yesterday, the US Supreme Court strongly affirmed that the first amendment’s free speech protections are broad and may not lightly be curtailed. The case at hand dealt with a California law that would have punished retailers for selling violent video games to minors. By declaring the law unconstitutional, the court struck an important blow against censorship, and we in the arts community should consider this an important victory.