drew3oooexperiments in modern living: politics, technology, activism & culture

Final post on government web censorship

Posted on Monday, 23 January, 2012 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share

“Progress of human civilization in the area of defining human freedom is not made from the top down. No king, no parliament, no government ever extended to the people more rights than the people insisted upon.” — Terence McKenna

I’m bored with banging on about the ways the United States government is attempting to censor the internet, track what everyone is doing on it and limit it to being little more than another form of a shopping mall. It’s not a terribly interesting topic. Depressing really. The best defenders of free speech are not those who rant about it, but those who publish, say and do the things that established powers don’t want published, said or done.

Wikileaks, Bradly Manning, and a preemie baby size handful of others have irritated the Powers That Be in the United States into action, which is a good thing. It let’s us know what they have in store. The likes of Pirate Bay and Richard O’Dwyer are early warning signs. Having tested America’s ambition to force its laws well beyond its borders, they deserve our respect. But whether it’s actions against political tyranny, military criminality or corporate greed, TorrentFreak’s Rick Falkvinge has the right prognosis: “But have you noticed that we’re always on the defensive? We cannot win or even maintain our rights to free speech that way.”

A couple of days ago was internet Blackout Day. It was a massive, international protest against proposed U.S. censorship legislation, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. It was a first-of-its kind online demonstration, with Reddit, Wikipedia, Tumblr and scads of other websites closing for the day and other giants like Google sign-posting users to contact their Congress Critters in opposition to these bills. It wasn’t entirely ineffective, and coming from me, that’s high praise. I’m cynical about protest. The January 18th mass action changed politicians behavior (for a day at least, which is still no mean feat).

After Black Out Day, 13 Senators flipped on PIPA. There are now 34 supporting it, 35 opposed and 31 who remain undeclared. The MPAA has threatened to stop contributing campaign funds to the flip-floppers.  SOPA lost backers in the House in similar fashion, and both bills now seem to be off the voting block. The White House blog also seemed to come out against the two bills. Though the blog post about it was written in that tepid, weak-kneed style that President Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signing statement employed as he ushered into law the right for indefinite detention and the authority to use the military against U.S. citizens. Nevermind that, though. For one tiny spark in time, the establishment seemed to respond to the masses on January 18th. Good work. You all made them blink. Pats on the back all around.

So outside of that and some nice takes on the protest here, here and here, why the dark mood? Because much like the result of millions of people marching against the war in Iraq, our opinions, logical arguments or better alternatives don’t count for much on Capitol Hill.  It doesn’t matter whether these particular bills pass the House and Senate and obtain the coveted swipe of approval from an Oval Office official pen. In some fashion, these laws are going to happen.

Intellectual property is a thought crime. It’s also a mighty powerful meme. People think it’s actually real. The substance of what these bills stand for is still on the way, because the idea itself has a life force of its own, and it’s not confined to the United States, though that’s certainly home to the corporate interests who will profit the most. The Great American Firewall is still under construction. This prophesy is courtesy of a confidentially drafted and signed international treaty, called ACTA.

Too many in power want to see this happen. Back in 2007ish the United States signed on to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international treaty drafted and negotiated outside of public scrutiny. Both SOPA and PIPA were attempts at enforcing ACTA in the United States, which is where it comes from anyway. Other governments are trying to pass similar laws right now.

So the wild point-’n-click hordes have chased some Congress Critters away from one attempt to aneact ACTA in the U.S. The government and corporate behaviors they detest haven’t changed much. They’re just being rebranded: SOPA’s author, Rep. Lamar Smith, launched another bill that would require internet service providers to log 18 months worth of all customers’ usage data. This bill has more co-sponsors than SOPA did, and it’s closer to a vote than SOPA was when it got the kibosh. The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 is a classy piece of work; it denies you your freedom and privacy while doing so in the name of The Children. Try opposing that, pervert.

All the aims of ACTA can easily be met in this bill, as well as outsourcing the government’s work of tracking people it doesn’t like for whatever reason. It’s another in a long line of similarly titled laws that erode political rights under the banner of public safety and/or intellectual property rights. Consider the Stop Online Piracy Act, or No Child Left Behind, or the Protect Intellectual Property Act. The context is that their opponents are supporters of thieves and pedophiles and the argument never returns to the sane, objective conclusion that none of this legislation will do anything against those people who are currently breaking existing laws.

The momentum is such that these laws will pass themselves in some form or another. And I’m outraged enough that I’ll copy & paste this guy, and echo “I am fucking tired of the fact that it is our own elected officials that are presenting the greatest threat to our civil liberties, rather than being the guardians of these civil liberties that their oath of office requires them to be.”

The coming corporate/government firewall is worse than censorship, because the internet is not merely a mechanism for speech. The internet is not just for shopping and ranting (though this blog may not seem to prove that point). It does things. It is itself a democratizing force. People organize through it and use it to create movements. These regulations are about limiting that behavior, not just speech. So no more bitching about it (aside from the one-off rant posts each time one of these bills become law). When this topic comes up again on this blog, it will be either ways to circumvent legislation or open advocacy and syndication of speech and activity that it would diminish.

The United States is a country that has now authorized the right to use its military against its own people for the purposes of assassination or indefinite detention, and is seriously considering something called the “Enemy Expatriation Act,” which could strip Americans of their citizenship whenever America’s whimsical foreign policy changes course and creates new enemies.

Screw that noise. Rick Falkvinge is the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. Being in Sweden, he still sees opportunity through working inside the system to change the law. Good on him! That’s not going to cut it against the U.S., though, where the system is already gamed against democratic change, thanks in large part to the rigged way corporations are considered people who can make campaign contributions. I agree that “we need to go on the offensive for our freedom of speech.” Falkvinge goes on to describe a plan for a legislation package in Europe that would level the playing field for all of us. It makes a lot of sense and I certainly do support it. Let’s take a gander:

“I’m borrowing this blueprint from the Green group in the European Parliament (where, in turn, it came from the Pirate delegation). Let’s try this for a legislation package in Europe, the United States, Australia, and everywhere else we can:

• It must be made absolutely clear that the copyright monopoly does not extend to what an ordinary person can do with ordinary equipment in their home and spare time; it regulates commercial, intent-to-profit activity only. Specifically, file sharing is always legal.
• Free sampling. There must be exceptions that make it legal to create mashups and remixes. Quotation rights, like those that exist for text, must be extended to sound and video.
• Digital Restrictions Management should preferably be outlawed, as it is a type of fraud nullifying consumer and citizen rights, but at least, it must always be legal to circumvent.
• The baseline commercial copyright monopoly is shortened to a reasonable five years from publication, extendable to twenty years through registration of the work in a copyright monopoly database.
• The public domain must be strengthened.
• Net neutrality must be guaranteed.
• Levies on blank media are outlawed.
• Overall, it must always be clear where the line goes; “the courts will sort it out” areas are not acceptable and tantamount to outlawing.”

Looking at the above, we can see that the copyright battle is also deeply part of the struggle to maintain political frree speech and activity as well. The fight against SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and other combinations of the alphabet used to limit our rights around copyright are tied to the battle against the U.S.’s indefinite detention rules, its Orwellian Homeland Security and TSA branches and continual attack on opponents of its endless wars and deadly foreign policy. If you have all these safeguards that Falkvinge and the Pirate Party support, you can also do a lot of organizing and advocating without fear of reprisal.

But that’s not where we’re headed. Falkvinge’s very reasonable plan is entirely out of step with the ACTA deal that Big Media is currently buying support for around the world and which the American Department of Justice supports because it will help it track opponents as well. ACTA is very much an American monster. Imagine how long the debate over Falkvinge’s positions would last in the Congress we have today. As soon as it started each and every Blackberry on Capitol Hill would vibrate with calls and texts from MPAA, RIAA and U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists. It might be enough to cause structural damage to the place.

The American system is in a state of crisis akin to a mental breakdown, and unfortunately Congress currently has no openings for non-corporate funded participants, which would be the best prescription of mood stabilizing medication. It’s time to go on the offensive. While Falkvinge and Pirate parties and their allies around the globe should continue a course for political change, we need what’s known in activist circles refer to as as diverse tactics.

Limiting the field to politics would be suicide for advocates of internet freedom, because at the root of it, they aren’t really politicians, but idealists. As such, they should be attempting to move the battle to arenas where they’ll do best. Borrowing from Saul Alinsky: “The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means.” To that end, the movement should take note of  items #2 and #3 in Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: “Never go outside the expertise of your people” and “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”

Changing laws is fine, but the Pirate Party itself was created by doers. People who make things that the established order doesn’t like. This is its militant wing (for lack of a better term), and one the Pirates should be proud of, because as far as the history of militant wings go, it’s possibly the first one centered around creation as opposed to destruction.

So we need more action from the militant wing. It’s not enough to lobby political leaders to give back freedom. Do that work, of course. But also get on with the business of acting freely. It’s also not enough to donate to Wikileaks. It’s a good thing to do, but what we really need is more people being Wikileaks. Be a Pirate Bay, or make your own MegaUpload. Don’t just donate to Bradly Manning’s legal fund, help the next Bradly Manning come forward. There are always more of them. Or be the next Bradley Manning yourself if you’ve got the goods (seriously, drop me a line about it). Considering where the U.S. is heading, we’ll need them.

File this one under Activism, Politics is everything | Tagged in acta, censorship, pipa, sopa | 1 person said something