Category: SOPA

SOPA; not our problem

January 19, 2012

Author: arjen

Yesterday was the big SOPA protest day. Wikipedia (in English), Boing Boing, Reddit and many other sites were blacked out. Other sites, and even google.com had one-line banners beneath the bar exhorting me to contact the US Congress. The link said: "millions of Americans Oppose PIPA and SOPA because these bills would censor the Internet and slow economic growth in the US". Even a classic song urges me "to call my congressman". But google.nl, did not show this – clearly indicating that it perceived the matter to be an internal American political problem.

In recent weeks there have been many calls for action outside the US against SOPA. These calls have been synchronized with outrage and protests as ~~Bush~~ Obama signed the NDAA anti-terrorism law. Under this law, anyone in the US "suspected" of involvement in "terrorism" (both nebulously defined) can be indefinitely imprisoned or even killed without trial or any other form of judicial review (think Stalin ’30). The anger itself is justified, but more than ten years too late. Indeed the only new provision in the NDAA is that the US can now treat its own citizens in ways that have been enforced against the world’s other 6.5 billion people since 2001.

The Big Brother legislation that has been introduced across the pond in the last ten years is now so extreme that even Oracle no longer wants to be a US-based company and European companies are beginning to avoid US providers over the Patriot Act. The whole country is obviously going through an Orwellian phase and so it is wise to keep a safe distance until it’s all over.

Even Michael Geist, otherwise a great source for information about ACTA, is not convincing. SOPA may perhaps be a broader North American problem but it still has little to do with the rest of us. Bits of Freedom in the Netherlands has a good overview of reasons to worry about a similar European SOPA-style legislation. Below are four points that explain why we shall not be badly affected:

"The Internet access to a site can be blocked." Annoying for Americans, but it won’t affect us. And Americans abroad can also easily bypass such a blockade through a VPN service, which is good for European VPN providers.

"Your domain name can be seized or sabotaged." Just avoid .com / .org / .net for your site/service, and steer clear of American DNS services and anything dependent on them – and that was an excellent idea long before SOPA. Your domain cannot be seized by customs and you will not be extradited and prosecuted for alleged violations of US copyright law.

“Payments to a website can be blocked." It’s really frustrating that there is an American credit card duopoly. However, Visa and Mastercard have already demonstrated with the Wikileaks case that no specific allegation of crime is required in order to be blacklisted. Fortunately, Europe has more and more local electronic banking systems that redress the balance.

"Websites will disappear from search results." It would be a shame if the American government really wanted to destroy Google, currently the best search engine, but it would also open the market for non-American alternatives beyond the reach of SOPA. Google could also clone itself, like Ikea – a Dutch foundation based in Zurich and Eemshaven datacenter and service its European customers.

This list confirms to me that we have become overly dependent of on US service providers (just like the software market!). This dependency is our real problem, not the current political shitstorm-of-the-month in the US. And finding alternatives and/or developing overseas partnerships is something we Europeans can proactively do for ourselves. That is where our focus should be.

America is broken, fundamentally broken. When an American politician cautiously suggests that the US might want to apply to itself rules it already imposes on others (the golden rule thing), he will be booed. This is the level of the debate leading up to the next "election" (I use the term advisedly – it’s more like bad reality-TV). The idea that it is still possible to influence US policy with a reasonable debate based on facts seems hopelessly naive. As George Carlin explained back in 2005, the US political system is too corrupt to deal even with the real interests of American citizens, let alone the interests of non-US citizens. US-based systems are now unsuitable for Europeans.

Smart Europeans can only wave goodbye and vote with their feet/wallets and DNS registrations. Surely Americans will understand that, it’s how they got started after all.

ACTA and SOPA are great!

December 22, 2011

Author: arjen

Socially aware people are, often justifiably, very good at moral indignation, but they just as often display a touching naivety. I recently watched with some surprise the American Occupy activists who were shocked (shocked I tell you!) as policemen (or university rent-a-cops) launched unprovoked attacks using batons and pepper spray.

It is indeed despicable that these officials use so much violence. But if people are still shocked by this in 2011, one has to wonder where they’ve been hiding for the last 10 years – have they not watched the news? Did they think that they could let stolen elections, illegal wars of aggression, shooting children with anti-tank weapons and the torture of innocent civilians happen without the ultimate consequence of their govenment using the same force against them?

But even the naive indignation of some Occupy activists about their government and its boot boys, is nothing compared to the childish surprise of the IT press about ACTA and SOPA. The copyright industry has for decades lobbied for the length of copyright to stretch to the end-of-time-plus-a-day extra.

Sony has no problems with infecting computers of their customers with what amounts to a virus. A torrent of writs has poured forth from the offices of copyright enforcement. Babies and the elderly without a PC, deceased persons, and even a HP laser printer have been falsely accused of copyright infringement (labeled as “theft” by the lawyers of the industry). Surely we all know the kinds of organisations we are facing now?

That’s why I’m happy that the Kafkaesque combo of ACTA / SOPA has become clear. Now ACTA and SOPA have almost been rammed through, at least we all know where we stand. The wolves have thrown off their sheep’s clothing and shown themselves for what they are: predators with no interest in our welfare. We therefore need not be quasi-shocked about the fact that some large companies behave like predators.

Now we have determined that we are dealing with predators, we can take action. Acting all shocked and angry once a wolf reveals himself in a kindergarten playroom is not an effective measure – he is a predator. If you want to prevent a bloodbath, you need to build a fence around the playroom – or perhaps even around the wolf.

If we want IT to work for us, we must ensure that the technology is designed around our interests rather than the interests of software vendors or copyright serfs. We need computers and network devices that do what we want them to do, even if that is not in the commercial interests of a handful of large companies or the political will of illegal government lobbyists.

For over 25 years the Free Software Foundation has been the only organization calling for this. During the last 15 years the debate about the principles of free software has been almost completely overshadowed by the much more business-orientated and pragmatic approach of the Opensource Initiative. The reason to found the Opensource Initiative was literally the ‘too principled’ attitude of the Free Software Foundation.

Meanwhile, all the things that the FSF has warned us about for so long have become the new and ugly reality. The complete lack of principle in discussing the applications of our technology is now starting to bite in very nasty ways. Almost all PCs (and I include Macs here), phones and game consoles have onboard functions that are not there for our benefit but for companies that want to earn our money. When you’re not in contol of your computer, is it still your computer / phone / console / router / etc … ?

This is an old political lesson: if you wait too long to protest, maybe you will no longer able or allowed to protest. This applies not only to addressing governments that start wars or the state stupidly bailing out the banks. This applies equally to the question of who is in charge of the computers and networks that we now all depend on. If we collectively do not demand principles as part of our tech, then we will get technology without them.

The ideas of the Free Software Foundation have never been more important. Not because proprietary software is worse (sometimes) nor because Free Software has become so much better (much!), but because our own systems, our digital home, is where we should all have have a say.

Only principled thinking (in addition to technical function) about our IT will keep the wolves from the door.