On search, invisibility and de facto censorship

 a con, ACTA, censorship, fascism, Google, search, search engines, social media, SOPA  No Responses »
May 262012
 

This post from Google the other day leads us to fascinating data:

We believe that openness is crucial for the future of the Internet. When something gets in the way of the free flow of information, we believe there should be transparency around what that block might be.

So two years ago we launched the Transparency Report, showing when and what information is accessible on Google services around the world. We started off by sharing data about the government requests we receive to remove content from our services or for information about our users. Then we began showing traffic patterns to our services, highlighting when they’ve been disrupted.

This page, on government requests for user data, is most revealing for example.  Whilst in the first half of 2011 the US made 5,950 requests for user data, with an acceptance rate by Google of 93 percent and a user/account total of 11,057, the United Kingdom made 1,279 requests in the same period, and of 1,444 users/accounts – requests which Google granted in 63 percent of cases.

A couple of observations.  Firstly, population-wise and comparatively speaking, the number of requests the US and UK made in the aforementioned period is very similar.  Secondly, it would appear that Google – an American company – has a significant bias towards accepting requests from the US government compared to, in this case, the UK.

But although the trends towards more requests for user and account data are showing a worrying increase, in reality what should really worry us is the data Google provides in relation to removal of websites from its search engine.  The public provision of data relating to the latter is, as Google underlines, recent:

Today we’re expanding the Transparency Report with a new section on copyright. Specifically, we’re disclosing the number of requests we get from copyright owners (and the organizations that represent them) to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content. We’re starting with search because we remove more results in response to copyright removal notices than for any other reason. [...]

And the figures for such removals?  Well, they’re quite startling – shocking one might even be inclined to say.  At the time of writing this post, and in the past month, over a million requests have been made to remove webpage addresses from Google’s search.  Interestingly, one of the major technology companies – Microsoft – heads the list with over half a million addresses it or its representatives claim infringe content which it holds copyrights on.

My conclusions?  It hardly seems necessary for us to worry about ACTA or SOPA any more.  If so many powerful organisations can remove websites from Google’s search by simply making one of a million other monthly requests, the invisibility cloak this drops over anyone trying to get their voice heard could – in other quite different circumstances – be easily stifled and eliminated.

Powerful voices are made powerful because they are heard.  Removal from a private monopolistic search service like Google’s is a tool those in charge could easily begin to employ – without resorting to the courts – to ensure a certain way of seeing and doing held sway.

Requesting that someone become invisible on Google’s web is these days to allow the option for a de facto censorship.  Another example of how Western governments could now be preparing the ground for private industry to do their social-media and citizen-sourced “communication smothering” without due and proper judicial process?

For this is, in fact, one way that fascism may creep in to democracy: when governments allow private corporate figures – outside due legal process – to determine who may speak, who may debate, who may exchange ideas and who may publish.

As well as who may not do all the aforementioned.

Dangerous shiny times, this consumerism which superficially entrances so.

These are not free times we live in – but fearful.  This is not an open web we have but Google’s own private playground.

Facebook is not the enemy but a response.  Half-baked at that, it would seem from the latest news.  Meanwhile, the real cause of all our miseries lies clearly elsewhere.

And it begins with what has become our favourite cloak engine!

If code is law, we need a parliament of coders

 ACTA, FreeTheInternet, Lawrence Lessig, offline world, on a high, online constitutions, open source, open web, PIPA, SOPA, sorted  1 Response »
Apr 272012
 

Lawrence Lessig famously stated that “code is law”:

The primary idea, as expressed in the title, is the notion that computer code (or “West Coast Code”, referring to Silicon Valley) may regulate conduct in much the same way that legal code (or “East Coast Code”, referring to Washington, D.C.) does.[2] More generally, Lessig argues that there are actually four major regulators — Law, Norms, Market, Architecture — each of which has a profound impact on society and whose implications must be considered.

In a sense, then, the pincer movement is utterly complete.  Whilst a parliament of lawyers is taken over by a posse of businesspeople, exerting undue influence over our democracy, from the other side – the side of coders and software architects everywhere (and by everywhere I mean Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter; as well as, even, I have to say, open source projects such as Mozilla, LibreOffice and WordPress itself) – our behaviours, our attitudes, what we can do or not do with our possessions, what we can say, how we say it, the kinds of things that strike at the very heart of our economies and define what we are as human beings … all the above is equally structured by people who run transnational behemoths for the benefit of certain ways of seeing or doing.

Now I’m not, for the moment, passing judgement on those mindsets in question.  All I’m saying is that to date our society – our democracy – has been based on the rule of law as defined by lawyers.  Our parliaments are stuffed full of ex- or practising lawyers; our politicos all speaking with the care and general prevision of those who might avoid a future trap cleverly set by an ever-watchful media class.

But if what Lessig has sustained for quite a while now is in any way true, the kind of profession which dominates our democracy is entirely the wrong one for our times.  If more law is being made in the online constitutions we now all operate under for our communication, peer-to-peer exchanges, commerce and gaming than is being made in our parliaments, surely we need a parliament stuffed with those who understand the new tools.

Otherwise, we depend on the good faith of people working behind closed corporate doors to create online and connected offline worlds with a sensibility and sensitivity to the needs of a wider democracy.

The current situation is, in fact, as follows: it’s as if we had a civilisation where the more money and wealth you had, the more right you had to tell citizens what to do.

Which surely can’t be the case.

Can it?

The solution then?  As per the title of this post: we need a parliament not of lawyers – or not only of lawyers – but, rather, more importantly, of coders and software engineers.  Only then will we be able to not just track the changes in technology that take place and their impact on our societies but also implement and engage from the very beginning a wider citizenship in democratic debate.

We need a new and parallel parliament – parallel, at least, to start out with – which writes the rules of how we should act and behave through software code itself.  Much as books, as core repositories of information, have developed into films and latterday websites, so the legal code which once ruled our civilisations is giving way to billions of lines of software.

Any legal professional worth his or her virtual salt must understand the implications.

Any political professional who cares about democracy must accept that patching up 19th century code, as SOPA, PIPA and ACTA have tried to do, is simply going about the job to hand in a totally inappropriate way.  We’ve been creating the software tools and their permissions and ways of seeing and doing before typing their rights and responsibilities in the legal parliamentary code of old.  Inevitably, if we choose to act thus we are going to fail miserably.

We are buying the horse blindfold, without examining its mouth before it’s too late.

We need to start at the beginning of the process; not come in way beyond the end of its implementation.

What needs sorting – and opening up to public scrutiny – are the software constitutions themselves.  It’s not open government we need any more but an engagement of end-users – let’s call them virtual voters – before software code is written and implemented; before it impacts on our societies.

It’s not open source code we need to promote (though that, of course, is virtuous) so much as open source process.

Not open government but the kind of open Internet we still have not seen.

A parliament of societally focussed coders, then – able to communicate and liaise with the above-mentioned virtual voters?

Why not?

Politicos, Facebook chats, eurocitizens and ACTA

 ACTA, Europe, European Parliament, European Union, eurozone, Facebook, in a hole, politicians, politicking, politics  No Responses »
Apr 262012
 

I am mightily confused by what I’ve just seen missed.  I installed the European Union’s Facebook chat app as per my previous post, and waited for something to happen.  I did this at 13.30 BST, because I’d understood from previous information that the chat was timed for 14.30 CET.  Nothing happened at 13.30 BST – so I waited till the following hour came round at 14.30 BST.  This time the chat was working (Facebook access required), and as I scrolled down the already 300 comments, most of which obviously hadn’t been answered, I readied my observations and questions to be launched into the maelstrom of what seemed like generally unhappy people.

This is what I would have said, had the chat lasted the scheduled hour and I’d had a chance to make my eurovoice heard:

  1. in the negotiation of ACTA, process has been obscure, flawed and anti-democratic since the start;
  2. discussion is OK, listening  is better, consultation is very good – but best of all is involvement from the outset;
  3. the real question for me is not whether we can sort out what was originally an offline problem of counterfeiting and piracy – and which will continue to exist even if the Internet is effectively shut down – but, rather, whether the Internet in the future is to be a public municipal space of the voters or an evermore commercially-oriented private space of public use;

If ACTA and its unhappy sons and daughters are to gain any kind of democratic approval, they need to show they are aware of the implications of all the above and are able to rectify properly the manifest failures committed to date, before – and not after, at some specious “next time round” – the European Parliament consents to passing the treaty.

Which is to say process must be clear; real public involvement must exist from the beginning; and the virtual commons we are proposing must start from the idea of a municipality of empowered and communicating citizens – a public space, that is, instead of a base tool to help a particular kind of capitalism (a model which, incidentally, has demonstrably failed us) gain further footholds in modern commerce.

This, meanwhile, is what Mr Schulz had to say on the subject of that selfsame process and ACTA’s transparency.  To this question …

Good afternoon Mr. President. How can I trust politicians when I have to learn about the ACTA agreement thru WIKILEAKS ?

… he answered thus:

[...] Trust me, the whole debate in the EP was completely open during the whole process. And the necessary steps to make it public and transparent was made by the European Parliament. Wiki leaks may also have played a role.

Was the debate really as open as it should’ve been?  Really?

Are we really trying to say this wasn’t set up as a rubber-stamping operation, where individual sovereign parliaments were picked off one by one in order to create an overwhelming momentum?  A momentum, what’s more, which was finally, and perhaps surprisingly, stopped in its tracks by over two million citizens’ signatures conveying a massive message of democratic resistance to secret treaty-making anywhere and everywhere.

This, after all, is ultimately all about people’s access to 21st century utilities – the basic tools we need to live in modern life.

My last observation then?  Follow Bill Gates’s advice: sort out the real world first before you multiply it up into the virtual.

ACTA doesn’t do that at all.

Democracy requires that it must.

And we, as voters and participants in that democracy, need people like Mr Schulz to say far more interesting things about the importance of democratic engagement and the virtual commons than he has managed to let out of the bag today.

On chatting about ACTA with the European Parliament

 ACTA, Europe, European Parliament, European Union, eurozone, Facebook, on a high  No Responses »
Apr 232012
 

Here’s a fascinating press release and invite which has just dropped into my inbox.  Needless to say, I shall be attending.

It’s from the press office of Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament.

Live chat on Facebook on ACTA on Thursday 26 April at 14:30 CET

The President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz will participate in a Web Chat about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on Thursday 26 April from 14:30- 15:30 CET. The chat will take place on the Facebook page of the European Parliament (see link below).

Ahead of the chat, EP President Schulz said:

“I want the debate on ACTA to be open and transparent. Citizens’ opinions and concerns have to be listened to when taking decisions on issues affecting their daily lives.

Decisions taken behind closed doors do not contribute to regaining people’s trust in the EU. The European Parliament takes seriously citizens’ participation in the debate. The almost 2.5 million signatures in the petition we received on ACTA is a very welcome sign of involvement and interest.”

As the note to Editors points out, without the European Parliament’s consent ACTA cannot be passed, so engaging with it as productively as we can manage to would seem to be the least we can do.

I’m not sure if this chat is by invite only – or whether as invitees we can invite others.  I did try to do the latter just now but the system didn’t seem to want to let me.

Anyhow, here’s the link to the Facebook app mentioned above which is needed in order for one to be able to participate in European Parliament chats.

http://chat.epfacebook.eu/

If you are able to join the chat, please do let me know beforehand on twitter.com/eiohel or facebook.com/miljenko.  Or, alternatively, simply send me an email on mil@pobox.com.  I’d be interested in comparing notes and information prior to attempting to ask any questions.

Finally, the EU has a dedicated site on ACTA and the issues surrounding it.  Again, worth your time as it underlines some of what the press release states, as well as signposting what’s at stake with what we can only argue is a long awaited clarity:

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has proved to be controversial ever since it was first proposed. The agreement is aimed at more effectively enforcing intellectual property rights on an international level. Many developed countries worry that their economies suffer great damage due to counterfeiting and piracy. However, opponents are concerned that it will favour large companies’ interests at the expense of citizens’ rights.

Its fate now lies in the hands of the European Parliament as without its consent ACTA will not be able to enter into force in the European Union. The European Commission announced on  22 February 2012 that it will refer ACTA to the European Court of Justice for a ruling on the agreement. Parliament will wait for the Court’s ruling before drawing any conclusions. However, in the meantime it will continue its own scrutiny of the agreement. Here you will find everything you need to know about ACTA and how the Parliament will come to a decision. It will contain the latest updates, details on how and when to follow committee meetings covering ACTA on the Parliamentary website, as well as useful links to relevant documents.

 

Why we have the web we have

 ACTA, FreeTheInternet, Internet, Open Rights Group, open web, PIPA, SOPA, sorted, web  No Responses »
Apr 182012
 

For those of you who live in the UK and are affected by its legislation, the Open Rights Group – of which I am a recent member – has just published this briefing page on what the government most likely is planning for our web.

First, because I think such information generally informs people’s wider prejudices about the Internet, here are some stats pulled from the briefing on what people think the web means for children:

Key facts

  • One quarter of UK 9-16 year olds say that they have seen sexual images in the past 12 months, whether online or offline. 11% encountered sexual images online. (See Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2011). Risks and safety on the internet: the UK report. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. p. 8-9)
  • “…overall, most children have not experienced sexual images online and, even of those who have, most say they were not bothered or upset by them”. (See Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2011). Risks and safety on the internet: the UK report. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. p. 8-9)
  • 24% of those who said they had seen sexual images online, or 3% of all the children surveyed, claimed they were upset or bothered by something they had seen. (See Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2011). Risks and safety on the internet: the UK report. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. p. 8-9)
  • 23 per cent of parents think it likely that their child will experience something that bothers them online in the next six months. (See The Bailey Review, page 36)
  • Ofcom found that in 2010, 26% of parents were very or fairly concerned about the content of websites their children were visiting. (UK Children’s Media Literacy, Ofcom, 2011, p. 66)

A pretty damning set of stats I might say – if, that is, sexual imagery is a particular issue for you in relation to how our kids are supposedly using the web.  Two things here: first, the real world presents its own challenges on this matter – the sexual imagery which is present in the music industry, for example, can often go beyond a similar pale and make us wonder if everything is as it should be; and second, the suspicion will always exist that the above – whilst covering important and key matters for our younger citizens – will be used and even exploited by governments and big business to make access to the Internet more convenient for their rather more closed interests.

On the wider issues of Internet freedom and innovation, then, here we have a couple of paragraphs on what ORG judges the government’s approach might lead to:

The UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Frank La Rue, noted (page 8) last year that restrictions on access to information can have a ““chilling effect” on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”

Without adequate safeguards, handing powers over what information people can access, or over the visibility of certain kinds of information, inevitably opens the door to censorship, either through mistakes or abuse.

Overall, we are concerned that powers that DCMS will propose in the forthcoming Green Paper to restrict access to information are being given away too cheaply. The result is a suite of proposals that will likely damage the Internet as a tool for the promotion of freedom of expression and innovation through fair and open markets.

Something I’d be inclined to agree with one hundred percent.

Meanwhile, and as a footnote to what is now an ongoing debate, I’d just like to underline that the reason I think we have the web we have is because, quite simply, we don’t have the democracy we deserve.  Some examples to follow, then, so you can see what I mean:

  1. If it’s too easy to access sex online, if the demand in itself exists, in part it’s because first-time sexual “experiences” offline – the music industry stuff I mention above, for example – is as teasingly bent out of shape as it could be.  Get it right in an offline context, with proper and sensitive education, and you might find the subject came out of the underground the web currently seems to so delight in positioning it.
  2. If it’s too easy to access illegal music online, it’s because right at the beginning of digital music the industry itself failed to move with the needs of the market – they felt that they could continue to run their traditionally massive overheads and generate waste on an industrial scale just as generations already did previously.
  3. If it’s too easy to access news and journalistic endeavour online, and we discover we can’t fund the mainstream media we supposedly deserve, it’s because offline for far too long it’s been a privileged medium where those in the know often tend to protect those who keep them in the know.  We’ve simply lost interest in listening to the clever bods who play with our interests – far better a Web 2.0 experience where we speak to our peers and can at least suss out the fakes before they get too big and important.
  4. If it’s too easy to access general knowledge in the form of digital encyclopaedias, it’s because Microsoft – of all companies – failed to see the virtues of getting users truly involved and crowdsourcing the future generations of content.

If we have the web we currently have, it’s because the society we should be able to fashion – a modern, democratic and freely discursive 21st century ecosystem of connected voters and legitimate business interests – just simply isn’t getting there at all.

If we have the web we currently have, it’s because the real-world alternative is so damningly corrupt and unfree.

And if they’re now trying to take away from us the web we’ve achieved to date, it’s precisely because they understand that – in truth – for every excess that now takes place on the Internet, a man or woman or corporation has taken the wrong path in offline endeavour.

Why do we have the web we have?  Because those of you who run the real world have made such a mess of what could’ve been a real journey of discovery!  The web we have isn’t in its natural state – it’s reacting violently as a corrective to a sequence of violences committed by those who prefer to impose, on this Planet Earth, their anti-democratic ways of doing.

That, my dear friends, is why we have the web we have.  And in order to properly sort it, we first need to properly sort the real world which has caused it.

Not patch, flailingly and foolishly, the technology that simply reflects our own grubby visages.

For that really would be a churlish – as well as childish – act of uncommon vengeance.

That “Internet of Things” (IoT)

 ACTA, Europe, European Parliament, European Union, Internet, on a high  No Responses »
Apr 142012
 

Here’s something which really does deserve your attention.  It’s an opinion survey for the European Commission on the subject of the approaching “Internet of Things” (IoT).  If you thought mixing the real and virtual worlds was already getting messy, you’ve seen absolutely nothing yet.  I reproduce their preamble below (the bold is mine):

The Internet of today offers access to content and information through connectivity to web pages and to multiple terminals (e.g., mobiles, TV). The next evolution will make it possible to access information related to our physical environment, through a generalised connectivity of everyday objects. A car may be able to report the status of its various subsystems using communicating embedded sensors for remote diagnosis and maintenance; home information about the status of the doors, shutters, and content of the fridge may be delivered to distant smart phones; personal devices may deliver to a central location the latest status of healthcare information of remotely cared patients; environmental data may be collected and processed globally for real time decision making.

Access to information relating to our surrounding environment is made possible through communicating objects able to interact with that environment and react to events. This makes possible new classes of applications such as smart homes with automated systems to monitor many aspects of daily living, smart grids and intelligent energy management, smart mobility with better control of traffic, or smart logistics with the integrated control of all processes in the entire distribution chain. There are endless examples of this evolution of networked devices, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Internet of Things holds the promise of significant progress in addressing global and societal challenges and to improve daily life. It is also a highly promising economic sector for sustainability, growth, innovation and employment. But it is likely to have a profound impact on society, in areas like privacy, security, ethics, and liability. The policy challenge is to assess the right trade-off between the potential economic and societal benefits and the control that we want to retain over an environment where machines will gather, exchange, process and store information automatically. The effects on our private and public space require that people and their governments debate the appropriate governance and management of the Internet of Things in the future. To this end the European Commission envisions a recommendation addressing the main issues, of which a number are outlined in the questions below.

The purpose of this consultation is to solicit the views of a wide range of stakeholders and the public at large.

This is going to be a key moment in how our future worlds – both real and online – develop.  The lines are not simply going to get blurred – they will actually disappear.  The drive to make more money out of such technologies really does require a firm cross-party alliance of those who believe privacy is still worth defending as a concept and societal good.  As Paul Bernal concludes in his interesting analysis on how our political parties are internally conflicted on the matter:

I’d like to think that all this is possible – that we can harness the ‘good’ side of each of the parties, and not let ourselves be railroaded into something that, ultimately, I don’t think that many people, whatever their political persuasion, either want or believe that we really need. The politics of privacy are complex – one of the things that I have found particularly refreshing since I started working in the field is that is can unite people with otherwise very different political perspectives. Let’s hope that we can unite in this way successfully this time.

And let’s hope that the European Commission gets it right this time – especially after their dismal behaviours around ACTA recently.

Can anything big behave as if it were small?

 ACTA, Big Agreement, Big Capitalism, Big Society, Big State, FreeTheInternet, Internet, on a high, open web, PIPA, small business, small government, SOPA, sorted, Splinternet, web, websites  No Responses »
Feb 112012
 

As I logged onto Twitter an hour ago, a long line of tweets came my way in which I had been included in the early hours of this morning.  Brian started the ball rolling by linking to a post of mine on the subject of what I tentatively called the “Big Agreement” – where a new contract would be drawn up between interested parties on what to do about both the “Big State” and “Big Capitalism”, neither of which were appearing to be especially relevant to a 21st century society with evermore devolving instincts.

The final tweet in the line of tweets in question was this one from Frances Coppola:

@brianfmoylan @eiohel @legalaware Big Society, Big State, Big Corporates, Big Capitalism….big is the problem

Now whilst I am inclined instinctively to agree, I do wonder if the problem is size or – on the other hand – behaviours.  After all, we do have a perfect paradigm of vastness in 21st century life which actually behaves like very small: here, I refer, of course, to the Internet and its various bits and bobs.  In essence – with its billions of pages of data and interactivity, its millions of connected servers and its ability to find and remember what’s relevant and apposite – it both acts like a human brain on a very discrete scale as well as performing the tasks of a globalised entity.

Very big then – or very small?

I’m inclined to believe it is both.

I’m not sure, therefore, that Frances is right to assume big can never act small for all our benefits.  In reality, the very fact that so much of modern lawyerly energy is being expended on trying to shoehorn the current web and Internet into the traditional business models of content industries across the world is a clear indication that the aforementioned elements of virtual communication are currently big enough to attract the attention of these corporate behemoths – but too small in some aspect or another for them to be able to fully trust the selfsame Internet’s ways of seeing and doing.

So it is that I might argue we need to examine how the web and the Internet manage to carry off this wonderful sleight of hand with such apparent aplomb.

For the experience such behaviours provide us with is surely applicable to other areas of human endeavour.

And, if only we were able to stand back and analyse with intelligence, we might take advantage greatly of such clear examples of overwhelming achievement – as we continue to strive to create more responsive public and private sectors.

Having your pie chart and eating it: how content industries want to globalise their capital and shrink our freedoms

 ACTA, content, immersive publishing, in a hole, intellectual property, James Firth, online publishing, PIPA, producer-consumers, publishing, Slightly Right of Centre, SOPA  No Responses »
Jan 312012
 

Wikipedia Commons

“¡El capitalismo es la leche, joder!” as the Spanish might say.  Loosely translated this might mean: “Capitalism is fucking amazing!”  And not in a necessarily complimentary sense …

James has the publishing industry’s very own version in his crosshairs this week:

Although documenting Stalinism, the lessons in Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four could apply equally to copyright and intellectual property.

Like Animalism, copyright is a system that should protect all creators.  But, as in Animal Farm, the pigs of the publishing industry – the ones who decide the rules amongst themselves – are running the farm for their own ends.

Moving on to Nineteen Eighty Four, a system designed for common social good can only be enforced with a policeman – in the form of Big Brother – in every home, street corner and gymnasium.

In an era where very low barriers to self-publishing make us all both copyright owners and capable of serious infringement, fundamental questions about enforceability and proportionality are being raised.

Will a system of copyright which attempts to detect and punish every minor infringement ever work? At least not without the threat of disproportionate punishment alongside the ability of Big Brother to monitor every web server, internet connection and home computer.

James’s post deserves to be read in full by everyone unhappy about SOPA, PIPA and now ACTA – amongst other pieces of draconian legislation currently being forced both on countries around the globe and very much behind the scenes.  The real issue here, then, is how our democracies are being circumvented – essentially, I suppose, because the voting publics of these democracies are composed of very many infringers of copyright, infringers who have so grown up in an environment of such casual law-breaking that they would probably consider what they do to be a generational norm.

As a result, those who would like copyright to be exerted more firmly simply do not trust democracies to be able to deliver on their expectations.  For the content industries, the people are unhappily both their nadir and their potential salvation.

A psychologically complex place for a powerful sector to find itself so demonstrably in.  “We need you,” they’re admitting, “but neither as you are – nor just yet.”

Clearly, if you are starting out and have a book or film to sell, you need to recover your investment.  You need to make a living.  But whilst it’s one mighty step for an eager and enthusiastic new self-publisher to require a value-adding platform such as Amazon’s Kindle, it’s quite another for an established and dinosaur-like business structure to decide it has the right to covertly change – behind democracy’s discourse – the rules of something as strategic as the worldwide web before the processes of its very own business model.

Instead of attempting to circumvent democracy, the content industry should surely try and circumvent the worldwide web.  Not by detonating what it does but – simply – by refusing to use it.  Not use it themselves.  Not tease us with their porous paywalls.  Not play silly games as they attempt to gain our dollars.

That’s all just fiddling around with an existing way of doing business – without caring to innovate in the least.

That’s all just lazy.

That’s all so 19th century.

For Pete’s sake, if you don’t want to get your tootsies cold, don’t dip them in the ocean.

So why not just leave the worldwide web for the producer-consumers amongst us – and let us consume and produce our own content to our virtual heart’s content?

And, meanwhile, use the infrastructures of the Internet itself to set up parallel systems of distribution and monetisation which fit your goals for the future.

*

As a final – perhaps dramatic – thought: how about we decide – as a society, democracy and global community – that, once such reasonably watertight systems of distribution and monetisation are in place, everything which can currently be found on the web enters an automatic public domain?

An intellectual property amnesty, if you like.

Draw a line under all infringement; draw a line under all our complaints about the shrinking public domain; draw a line under all our potshots at lazy cash-cow industries; draw a line under content confrontation …

Decide, instead, to turn over a page in the historic battle between traditional producers and those consumers who would mimic them – and start from the boldest scratch in publishing history.

After all, in a globalising world, it’s not only time we liberated capital’s right to go wherever it should choose but also, far more importantly, especially in a democratic context, producers’ rights to decide how, where and when they might both produce and deliver their content – whether this be rather more traditionally, as in the US film industry, or as part of the more amateur and widespread generation of latterday producer-consumers.

Those who make massive investments in content and creativity do, of course, deserve a commensurate return.  But in their desire to assure that return, they do not – in the 21st century – have the right to erect barricades to entry which once inevitably existed for technological reasons … but do not have to exist any more.

And in the absence of such technological barriers, they should most certainly not be allowed to get away with using the law to prevent the wider progress of that grandeur under discussion today – that is to say, that socialised human imagination.

"ACTA: The new threat to the net"

 a con, ACTA, Avaaz.org, free-market capitalism, FreeTheInternet, Internet, PIPA, SOPA, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jan 302012
 

I’ve just received this email from Avaaz.org – it’s well worth a read as it highlights how large corporations and wealthy interests continue to try and game the free markets and our wider economies in their favour:

Dear friends,

A new global treaty could allow corporations to police everything that we do on the Internet. Last week 3 million of us successfully pushed back the US censorship bills – if we act now, we can get the EU Parliament to bury this new threat to all of us: 

Last week, 3 million of us beat back America’s attack on our Internet! — but there is an even bigger threat out there, and our global movement for freedom online is perfectly poised to kill it for good.

ACTA — a global treaty — could allow corporations to censor the Internet. Negotiated in secret by a small number of rich countries and corporate powers, it would set up a shadowy new anti-counterfeiting body to allow private interests to police everything that we do online and impose massive penalties – even prison sentences — against people they say have harmed their business.

Europe is deciding right now whether to ratify ACTA — and without them, this global attack on Internet freedom will collapse. We know they have opposed ACTA before, but some members of Parliament are wavering – let’s give them the push they need to reject the treaty. Sign the petition — we’ll do a spectacular delivery in Brussels when we reach 500,000 signatures:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?vl

It’s outrageous — governments of four-fifths of the world’s people were excluded from the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations and unelected bureaucrats have worked closely with corporate lobbyists to craft new rules and a dangerously powerful enforcement regime. ACTA would initially cover the US, EU and 9 other countries, then be rolled out across the world. But if we can get the EU to say no now, the treaty will lose momentum and could stall for good.

The oppressively strict regulations could mean people everywhere are punished for simple acts such as sharing a newspaper article or uploading a video of a party where copyrighted music is played. Sold as a trade agreement to protect copyrights, ACTA could also ban lifesaving generic drugs and threaten local farmers’ access to the seeds they need. And, amazingly, the ACTA committee will have carte blanche to change its own rules and sanctions with no democratic scrutiny.

Big corporate interests are pushing hard for this, but the EU Parliament stands in the way. Let’s send a loud call to Parliamentarians to face down the lobbies and stand firm for Internet freedom. Sign now and send to everyone you know:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?vl

Last week, we saw the strength of our collective power when millions of us joined forces to stop the US from passing an Internet censorship law that would have struck at the heart of the Internet. We also showed the world how powerful our voices can be. Let’s raise them again to tackle this new threat.

With hope and determination,

Dalia, Alice, Pascal, Emma, Ricken, Maria Paz and the rest of the Avaaz team

More information:

European Parliament member resigns in ACTA protest
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16757142

If You Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/01/23/if-you-thought-sopa-was-bad-just-wait-until-you-meet-acta/

ACTA vs. SOPA: Five Reasons ACTA is Scarier Threat to Internet Freedom
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/286925/20120124/acta-sopa-reasons-scarier-threat-internet-freedom.htm?cid=2

What’s Wrong With ACTA
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number10.1/whats-wrong-with-ACTA

The secret treaty: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and Its Impact on Access to Medicines
http://www.msfaccess.org/content/secret-treaty-anti-counterfeiting-trade-agreement-acta-and-its-impact-access-medicines


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