Today is the last day of 2009 and it’s time, therefore, for a Top 10 Worst of the Year list.
But not this year. There’s only one contender.
The net represents the most important communications development since the steam engine. So it’s a given that in the eyes of politicians, bureaucrats and corporate captains everywhere, it must be brought under the strictest possible control.
Right now.
Their very existences depend on that. So they’ve come up with THE Number One, all-encompassing Bad not only of 2009, but of the last two centuries.
It’s called ACTA, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and if it’s ever formulated as law around the world, every man, woman and child on the planet will in one stroke lose their freedom of speech to fall under the thrall of companies and politicians who answer only to one small feral group —
— corporate shareholders
The self-serving, cynical corporate and political manoeuvrings, the secrecy, the lies and deceptions that are ACTA are the “con-trick played on the world”, says Glyn Moody in his Open blog.
And he’s right.
Unspun news, information and data
Copyright as wielded over the preceding decades is dead. Online People Power represents the decentralisation of traditional forms of communication, replacing them with an amorphous, ever-expanding web of P2P — People2People — sites where unspun news, information and data are posted and re-posted for unrestricted consumption by anyone of any age, anywhere, with a net account.
That includes literature, movies, music.
And news.
In this 21st century, anything which can be digitised will be digitised and posted online in one format or another, and that in turn means the corporate and governmental Powers That Used To Be have all-but lost control of their formerly subservient ‘consumer’ and ‘voter’ bases.
As events occur, they’re instantly disseminated, and lies and intrigues instantly exposed not just locally, but universally.
With their MPAA as the front, the major Hollywood studios have escalated their efforts to force ACTA, their secret copyright ‘initiative’, into being, I said in p2pnet recently, going on >>>
But it isn’t only the MPAA. Big Music’s RIAA is also pushing ACTA for all it’s worth.
“And it isn’t only ACTA. The entertainment industry — read the Big 4 record labels and Hollywood — is simultaneously hammering its Three Strikes plan, trying to have it adopted as law in countries such as Britain and France.
Implemented, it would have administrations acting as industry copyright agents, and local ISPs targetting their own customers on behalf of the cartels.
Worse, “It is important to recognise that 3-strikes is fundamentally unjust/unethical given that no evidence is required”, Crosbie Fitch recently pointed out.
“The victim is simply given two warnings (tipped-off as to what’s about to happen without any way of preventing it) before they are disconnected,” he said, going on:
“Your evidence of innocence has to wait until after your ISP has disconnected you, after your PC has been confiscated, after your assets have been seized, after you have located a lawyer willing to take on your case, after you have paid your lawyer to demonstrate at a tribunal that you have grounds to plead for an appeal against your disconnection, and then at your appeal your evidence can be presented (if you still have it).”
The Three Strikes plan is being dished up as separate governmment ‘initiatives’ created in the interests of the electorates. But it’s merely an element of ACTA, and only the movie and music studios benefit from it, as bizarre as that may seem.
And if you find that alarming, also consider this:
The major record labels and Hollywood movie studios are traditionally and infamously linked to organized crime, rampant drug use, the use of sex as currency and corruption at all levels, and they’re the absolute last entities on earth to be instructing anyone on anything.
But they’re already ‘educating’ our children on moral issues, on what’s right and what’s wrong and on truth and fairness.
It’s happening everywhere with the collusion of national and local governments and school staffs and administrations.
And it would become standard practice under ACTA.
The new money machine
“It is planned that all these secret negotiations taking place will finish in 2010 and the world will be presented with a new world wide copyright/IP treaty that has been written and bullied through all levels of individual country governments by the US entertainment industry and their trade groups around the world,” says Steve Hodson in The Inquistr >>>
If we think the copyright systems we have in each of our country is draconian I can promise you this – you ain’t seen nothing and if you don’t think this fight over copyright laws isn’t important then you sincerely need to give your head a shake. Under the provisions, that we know of from leaks, of ACTA we will see a sudden shift of power on the Internet. It will no longer be a medium of the people but instead it will be the new money machine of the entertainment industry and any voices against them will suddenly find themselves silenced and bereft of any legal recourse.
It won’t be our Internet anymore. So think about that as you all get woodies about how important Twitter is. Think about it as you bicker over whether RSS is dead, whether blogging is dead, or whether real-time search is the next killer app.
I would like to think that people are smart enough to see the coming danger – especially those of us in the tech industry – and do something to stem this tide. Sadly though we’re too worried about some new shiny toy. Too worried that we don’t have enough followers. Too worried about whether we are among the first to be using some stupid ass service.
The really sad part about this?
I don’t see it changing.
But I think Steve is wrong.
It’s already changing, and ACTA is the proof.
Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, and Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, NBC Universal and Sony Pictures, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to force it through. They’re pulling out all the stops and calling in every political and lamescream media marker they have, twisting arms, bribing, blackmailing.
It’s their last-ditch effort to maintain the status quo.
But it’s too late.
Ten years ago the corporate entertainment industry Three Strikes campaign would have been a fait accompli. Now, however, thanks to the net, the cartels and the governments they’ve suborned are being thwarted at every turn and even if ACTA is implemented, it’ll be an epic fail.
It’s impossible to cage a cloud.
Copyright? Forget it.
Creators are already dealing directly with their audiences and users, revolutionising the way things are handled and distrtibuted, and by whom.
Copyright? Forget it. Natural rights, customers and creators connecting honestly and directly, one-on-one, is where it’s at.
And as more and more people sign up and log on, opportunities for creators to work with, as well as for, their customers increase exponentially.
ACTA represents End-of-an-Age efforts by the cartels and corrupt governments who depend in their TV, radio and newspapers to give them substance, to retain their powers.
The entertainment industry may run the corporate print and electronic news and information media with an iron hand, but they have absolutely no control over what happens online.
‘We’re everyone you depend on … ‘
I’m just one old guy living in a tiny village on an island off mainland British Columbia in Canada. But I have a web page and with it, I have the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of people during the course of a single year.
This has never been possible before.
And there are millions of other people like me.
When Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club was written in the mid-1990s, the net was only just beginning to take hold.
It central character is Tyler Durden who towards the end of the book and (and movie) says to ‘Them’ >>>
Remember this. The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges.
We control every part of your life.
The executives, politicians and ‘creators should have that in neon lights, hanging on the walls in their offices.
The net and P2P People Power are the Great Equalisers and now, for the first time, we can make sure our natural rights are respected.
Copy?
Jon Newton