The Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently running an awareness campaign to raise funds and gather support across the blogosphere. I urge all my fellow bloggers, and also all you lurkers out there (oh yes, I can see you, you know) to get behind this great organization by either joining up, making a donation or carrying some EFF badges on your sites (or all of the above).

The EFF is a non-profit organization which actively campaigns to protect freedom of speech (and other human rights) in the digital world. If you’ve never heard of them, you should go to their site and check them out. If you are a blogger, these are some of the rights the EFF is fighting to protect for you:

♦Your right to blog anonymously.
♦Your right to allow people to comment on your blog without being held responsible for those comments (oooh yes, now couldn’t that be troublesome?).
♦Your right to make fair use of intellectual property (to protect you from, say, being sued because you reviewed a book and quoted from it in that review).
♦Your rights in relation to blogging about your workplace.

And there are many others.

I live in Australia, and most of the law the EFF is helping to define relates only to US law. Nevertheless, as the net evolves, it is extremely likely that the legal scaffold that the EFF sets in place will be used as a guide elsewhere. So even if you live outside the US, I urge you to support the EFF if you are able.

Yes Sir!