We didn’t blackout Smartpopbooks.com today. But we did want to talk a little bit about why we don’t support SOPA.

We are not in support of piracy, obviously. Our continued existence and ability to create books depends on people buying those books, and as e-books are adopted more widely, e-book piracy is bound to continue to grow. But I’m personally not convinced—as many, many people around the web and in academia and in politics are not convinced—that SOPA and PIPA are the way to do that.

We publish books. We’re in the business of making agreements with writers on their copyrighted work, where we pay them a certain amount of money for the privilege of making their work available to book buyers. And so we have an interest in defending those copyrights. I’ve contacted websites on authors’ behalves and asked them to take down copyrighted content. I’ve even put in requests on a few file-sharing sites to take down pirated copies of some of our books (we don’t actively go in search of these, but when Google Alerts drop them in our laps . . .). And it’s a pain. There’s no guarantee they’ll do it, and usually, it’s not worth the time it takes to investigate whether there’s actually infringement going on and put in the request. Sure, it would be faster and easier to be able to report those sites to a US Department of Justice with the ability to immediately shut those sites down.

But it’s faster and easier to do a lot of things (rob a bank rather than go to work every day; eat ice cream for dinner). That doesn’t mean it’s right, or a good idea. That doesn’t mean the benefits outweigh the cost.

Smart Pop sits at an interesting intersection: we produce copyrighted works, that warrant protection . . . and we produce these works about other copyrighted works. What we produce are critical essays, and that’s protected under fair use. There’s fuzzy line when it comes to the details of fair use, and we make a point of always staying on the right side of the line. But if someone disagrees, they have to explain where they think we went wrong. They can’t just shut down bookstores that sell our books. They can’t close down our printers. They can’t prevent readers from buying them.

Which, though it isn’t SOPA’s stated intention, is what a lot of people are afraid it will be used to do: shut down access to content (whether via shutting down sites, or preventing other sites from linking to them for fear of being shut down) that copyright holders don’t like.

And that worries me not because I’m especially worried for our website; it worries me on my own behalf, and on the behalf of the people who read our books. It worries me on behalf of the fansites that have always been so generous in helping us get the word out about our titles. And it worries me on behalf of fandom as a whole, as an concept.

We believe that passionate involvement—through critical essays like ours, or through thoughtful recaps, spirited comment discussion, fan art, etc.—is a valuable way of not just interacting with copyrighted work, but also promoting it and furthering its reach.

And because what is “transformative” and thus protected under fair use, and what is not, is not hard and fast—because there is so much gray area there—I particularly worry, under SOPA, about what could become of the culture of producing and sharing, the community, around copyrighted works that the internet has fostered.

To learn more, or join those sending letters to their representatives: americancensorship.org. (Also, Fark.com also has some great informational links at the bottom of their “whiteout” page.)