While Prince (the artist formerly known as) proceeds to alienate his fans (those who made him what he is, whatever he is) by threatening to sue several of his fan web sites for copyright infringement, fans of much less prickly creatives are joining together to support those whose work they admire and share with relish.
Writers are striking and their fans are rallying. Yes, writers have fans, too.
It pretty much started with those formidable Josh Whedon fans (you know, the ones who, each year, raise all that money for Equality Now), who (in L.A. for their annual Serenity fan bash) dropped off some pizzas for their favorite strike-walking writers.
And, in their usual energetically creative fashion, the Whedon warriors launched a new campaign to get fans of popular (and even unpopular) television series to become vocal about the rights of writers in this new digital age.
Josh Whedon, a poetic, prolific, and passionate writer in his own right, blogged it well:

We’re talking about story-telling, the most basic human need. Food? That’s an animal need. Shelter? That’s a luxury item that leads to social grouping, which leads directly to fancy scarves. But human awareness is all about story-telling. The selective narrative of your memory. The story of why the Sky Bully throws lightning at you. From the first, stories, even unspoken, separated us from the other, cooler beasts. And now we’re talking about the stories that define our nation’s popular culture – a huge part of its identity. These are the people that think those up. Working writers.

None of the writers – or anyone – I’ve spoken to have ever heard of fans organizing and supporting a strike the way you guys have. Supporting our right not to entertain you. Seriously, that’s rare. When I showed my wife the banner that went with the pizza scheme, she just said, “These people are gonna be running the world.” Man, I hope she’s right.

I found out from b!X post about fans like this one who are creating graphics that bloggers and other Netizens can display to show their support for the writer’s strike.
I watch an awful lot of television, so I’m thinking if I were to line up my picket placards, they would begin like this:

Although, on second thought, I should just go with this one: