Princess awards First Amendment lawyer "Defender of Internet" medal for SOPA fight

Marvin Ammori's recently-bestowed freedom bling. Note the Nyan Cat.

Constitutional law expert Marvin Ammori, one of the First Amendment scholars along with Larry Tribe who explained how SOPA would violate the First Amendment, shares a wonderful story with Boing Boing. Snip from his blog post:

When I was quite young, I saw the first Star Wars movie and believed that, if I took part in a great cause, it would end with a medal ceremony and a princess conferring the medal. It has finally happened.

Last night, I received a medal from Princess Tiffiniy Ying Cheng of Fight for the Future, representing the “committee for the Defenders of the Internet.” Bestowed upon me was the Nyan Cat Medal of Internet Awesomeness, the “highest honor known to Internet Defenders.” I could not be more honored.

Princess Tiffiniy’s organization was one of the leaders in the Battle of SOPA. She and her partner Holmes Wilson are pretty amazingly brilliant–they were the people who organized the Free Justin Bieber campaign, led American Censorship Day on November 16, and were among the leaders organizing the January 18 Blackout. Many people pulled together from an array of communities to fight SOPA–Redditers, Wikipedians, civil libertarians, entrepreneurs, artists, venture capitalists, tech executives, consumer electronics makers, tech bloggers–alongside millions of people who just love the Internet and hate Internet censorship, from technologically advanced Wookiies to technologically challenged Ewoks. Many awesome people were involved in leading, coordinating, and taking the time to fight SOPA.

Read the rest of his story, and see a larger version of the pic: "Medal Ceremony in Real Life: for Internet Awesomeness." [ammori.org] Fast Company also gave him props.

• [Brainspore]

  Yeah, but I bet the Wookiee lawyer gets sh*t.

  • [jimh]

     The Wookiee gets a comb-out at a participating salon. (A $750 value.)

  • [retepslluerb]

    Come to think it, perhaps Wookies are stout republicans (the real kind, I mean) and simply don’t accept honors and medals from monarchists.

• [crummett]

  Completely win-filled!

  • [chellberty]

    The internet was created when a can of coffee divided by zero on a machine like that one on the coin, true story.

• [z7q2]

  It’s beautiful o.o

• [jimh]

  I hope the Princess wore some kick ass lip gloss for the ceremony.

• [johnphantom]

  Interesting how the icon is a TRS-80 Model 3

  • [archanoid]

    Trash 80 FTW!

  • [Richard Milward]

    But it’s all left-right reversed! Who flipped the negative? :-)

• [Nash Rambler]

  You know, we’re all laughing at this thing, but what it represents is a thing greater than us all. . .

  • [Scott Bartlett]

    I believe its intention was partly to generate amusement.

• [Stephen Schenck]

  I wish it was the actual Nyan cat pixel art, but other than that, digging it!

• [penguinchris]

  Is the “Princess Tiffiniy Ying Cheng” thing supposed to be a joke?

  • [Marvin Ammori]

     Tiff is not literally a princess. The allusion is to Princess Leia who conferred the medals at the end of the movie and who was also a Jedi in her right.

    • [penguinchris]

      I’m well aware of the reference and found it amusing, and yeah I googled the name, this was just so ambiguously written that it seemed to imply (to me anyway) that she was a real princess when it seemed clear that she isn’t :)

      • [Ambiguity]

        She may not have been a real princess, but after this ceremony she most certainly is!

• [teknocrat]

  I so want one of those medals