Sofa, settee, couch. It’s where the potatoes sit. It’s where the media moguls would prefer you to be, passively consuming the cr*p they want to feed you and watching inane advertisements. Off the couch creating and sharing is where they’d rather you weren’t, hence DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and all that comes after. Be afraid, this isn’t just about stopping you making a copy of a song or movie, this is about putting each and every one of us back in our place – on the couch, consuming scheduled cr*p, like good little citizens.

In this fascinating and worrying TED Talk, Clay Shirky asks: What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? He delivers his manifesto, a call to defend our intellectual liberty to create, discuss, link and share, rather than swallowing unthinkingly what the industry wants us to consume. Remember these are multinational corporations that hold global sway, freedoms removed in the good-old U.S. of A will be removed the world over and we will never get them back. Shirky is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the subject of the social and economic impact of Internet technology. He holds joint positions at New York University as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and as Assistant Arts Professor in the New Media focused graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program.