My mother is very by-the-book. For years my father called her “Moral Marian” because she wouldn’t cross the road without a walk signal even if there was no traffic in site. Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree… Even though I’m constantly disappointed when Netflix and iTunes don’t have all the titles I want to watch, I never turn to torrent sites to access them illegally.

So when it comes to the Stop Online Piracy Act, you would THINK I could get behind it… were it not for the following problem highlighted by CNET:

“A little-noticed portion of the proposed law, which CNET highlighted in an article, goes further than Protect IP and could require Internet providers to monitor customers’ traffic and block Web sites suspected of copyright infringement.”

Under SOPA, a site could literally be shut down after a single copyright claim without a trial.

This directly affects my industry: the web TV industry.

Since 2005 I have created and produced a number of web series that relied heavily on fair use. This exception to copyright allowed me and my partner Rudy Jahchan to create parodies on our sci-fi comedy show Galacticast and display comic artwork in our comic book review show A Comicbook Orange. Even though we were extremely careful to follow the guidelines of fair use law, we still lived in fear that a big studio would sue us for using their characters, music, images, or video footage. Thankfully this never happened, but if it had we did have the law on our side. If SOPA goes through, web videos that feature any sort of copyrighted material under fair use laws may not be so lucky.

Another very serious problem the web TV industry could face is copyright infringement claims from corporations. As a producer I have often licensed music, images and art directly from musicians, photographers and artists. In fact, the background for the A Comicbook Orange web site is made up of copyrighted illustrations that are used with permission from the artists directly, but (under SOPA) if a big company like Marvel or DC were to claim they infringe on their copyright our entire site could be shut down without our ability to protest and prove our innocence.

Think this doesn’t sound possible? Read this article about how Universal Media Group removed an episode of TWiT show Tech News Today from YouTube for reporting on a recent Universal copyright controversy. Hell, UMG and other music and media companies have been removing and blocking videos from YouTube for YEARS… why would we give them the keys to do this throughout the entire internet?

We all need to take action.

Call your congressperson and let them know that you do not support this bill. Feel free to add that if they do, you will not support them in the next election. Go here to find your local representative.

In addition, let the corporations and organizations behind this bill know that you expect them to retract their support or you will publicly boycott their products and services. For your reference, here is a list of companies that have come out in support of SOPA. Personally, I’m disappointed in the Screen Actors Guild, especially since they should be representing the interests of the web TV community and if they have conflicting interests between the studios and independents, they should simply retract their support and stay neutral.

Be sure to give a pat on the back to all of those who have come out to oppose the bill. Aside from all the forward-thinking internet companies, I’m truly grateful to the Writers Guild of America, West for speaking out about its’ opposition.

And lastly, be sure to vote for representatives in the future who understand current technology because… it’s no longer OK to not know how the internet works.

I had lots of fun filming this with them, so I hope you have fun checking it out.

The International Academy of Web Television nominated my web series A Comicbook Orange for three IAWTV Awards!

• Best Hosted (Taped) Web Series – A Comicbook Orange
• Best Host (Taped) – Casey McKinnon, A Comicbook Orange
• Best Writing (Non-Fiction) – Rudy Jahchan, A Comicbook Orange

We’re all really grateful to the voting members of the IAWTV and I’m looking forward to getting all dressed up and attending the ceremony at CES in Las Vegas! For those who followed my dress exploits before the last big award show I received a nomination for, you’ll be happy/sad to find out I already bought a dress this time!

Be sure to check out the full list of nominees. As a Trekkie, I’m happy to see the amazing Jeri Ryan nominated for Best Female Performance (Drama) for her work on Mortal Kombat: Legacy. Similarly, I’m also relieved to see I’m not in the same category as her. ;) Congrats, Jeri, I hope to see you at the ceremony!

The award ceremony will take place on January 12th, 2012 and will be live-streamed online. I’ll remind you closer to the date and link to the stream from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and my blog.

Last month I had lunch with my friend Teal Sherer and she said she wanted to make a lightsaber battle video. She asked if I was interested in doing it with her, and I said something along the lines of “HELL yes!!!” Thanks to the fight coordination and direction of America Young, the idea took shape very quickly… and I’m so happy that I can finally show you “ELF SABERS“!

Be sure to check out Comediva for other wonderfully funny videos, and some behind the scenes photos of our ELF SABERS shoot. And, happy holidays, everyone!!!

I was a guest on TWiT‘s Framerate this week thanks to the suggestion of the show’s wonderful hosts Tom Merritt and Brian Brushwood! We discussed the online video industry, the future of television distribution, and the TV shows and movies we’ve been watching. Thanks to Tom, Brian, and producer Jason Howell for having me on!

Thanks to Juan Carlos Bagnell from Movies You May Have Missed for making this all possible (directing, narrating, and making me crack up). And thanks to all of you awesome Google+ commenters who make me giggle every day. :)

You can find me on Google+ here.

…Rudy and I attended the Vloggies, the first ever web video awards, and won five awards for Galacticast! We were critical of the event at first because there were a few f*ckups and it was more corporate than we wanted a web video awards show to be, but in time (and especially after last year’s Streamys) I grew to look back on it with shiny eyes.

Many of the creative and innovative people who attended the Vloggies have gone on to do amazing things. One of them is sadly no longer with us… R.I.P. Oscar, we miss you.

For more information on the Vloggies I highly suggest reading Laughing Squid’s Vloggies wrap-up… I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Photos courtesy of Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

One of my favorite movies of all time is Repo Man. With taglines like “Let’s do some crimes!” and “…It’s 4 A.M., do you know where your car is?”, it’s hard for most people to even imagine that it’s a sci-fi movie. Yet, one of my favorite alien theories came from this film – see video below to hear Miller’s theory on time travel and aliens:

Another one of these unsuspecting sci-fi films is Dude, Where’s My Car? After seeing countless commercials portraying it as a stoner comedy, who would’ve known that it was actually a pretty decent sci-fi movie? I didn’t go see it in the movie theater, and was NOT the one who selected it as a rental, but was mind-blowingly surprised when it had more to it than mindless idiocy.

So there you go, two unsuspecting, but entertaining little sci-fi movies for you to add to your Netflix queue… because if you haven’t seen them yet, you need to. Well, at least Repo Man. ;)

Are there any other English language films that I should add to this list? Let me know in the comments… I’m genuinely interested.

I love hearing stories about how people came up with their first internet pseudonym. It tells a lot about a person, especially when the pseudonyms are really nerdy.

My first pseudonym came from watching a lot of Star Trek: Voyager. When I was living in Edinburgh between 1997-1999, I trained in a martial art called Kuk Sool Won. My instructor Master Don Mackenzie used popular TV and movie quotes to motivate us; with many of his references coming from Highlander, Star Trek, and various superhero movies. In Star Trek: Voyager episode Drone, a Borg drone is created after a transporter incident that fuses the Doctor’s mobile emitter with some of Seven of Nine’s nanoprobes. During the course of the episode the drone asks for a designation, but since Seven of Nine and Captain Janeway are encouraging him to embrace his individuality, he selects the name One. Soon after that episode aired, Master Don started teasing/motivating me by calling me “One of One.” I loved it.

When I finally went to register my first email address I tried to get oneofone, but someone had already taken it. As they do, Yahoo suggested I add a number to the username to make it unique. So what number did I add? 5618, the Borg designation for the human species. After that, oneofone5618 was born! :P

So what was your first internet pseudonym, and what was the story behind it?