The Internet Under Siege

Gorgonzola writes: "Lawrence Lessig has written an accessible article in Foreign Policy on the threats to freedom on the internet, including the threat the DMCA poses to open and free software. Nothing new to Slashdot regulars, but good to see something appear in an influential magazine like Foreign Policy. An article mentioning the Sklyarov case like this one does, is going to draw a lot more attention from policymakers to the problems the DMCA and other legal troubles are posing to online freedom than your average rant on a board like this, how well reasoned it may be."

Comments

Accessible?

[fobbman]

"Lawrence Lessig has written an accessible article in Foreign Policy..."

Give it time. /. effect seldom misses.

A very troubling bit to me...

[Eryq]

...is where he described how companies are invoking the DMCA to protect themselves from criticism.

a British pharmaceutical company invoked the DMCA in order to force an ISP to shut down an animal rights site that criticized the British company. Said the ISP, "It's very clear [the British company] just wants to shut them up," but ISPs have no incentive to resist the claims.

Consider the ramifications if applied widely. To call attention to, say, meat products in McDonald's supposedly-vegetarian food (as in India). To Nike's sweatshops. Even if the information is true, the ISPs might prefer to yank it rather than verify that it violates copyright. And, since you're obviously a troublemaker, they might cancel your account completely.

So welcome to the DMCA future, where an unsubstantiated accusation carries punishment even without a conviction -- so long as the accusation is coming from a moneyed source.

(Actually, given that people accused of crimes often have their reputations ruined, even after acquital, perhaps it's just a logical extension of the world today. But it still sucks.)

We're losing our rights... Now what?

[dominion]

It seems like for all the time I've been on Slashdot (at least 3 years now), there's been this constant discussion around whether we're losing our rights or not...

I want this discussion to end. Not because it's not a valid discussion, but because conclusions have already been made.

Yes, we are losing our rights.

Where are we losing them from? Some say government, others say industry, and some insist that we're not losing our rights at all.

I'm not interested in arguing with those who insist everything's just fine.

There needs to be a basic analysis of how anarchic cultures like that of the internet and that of the free software movement interact (and many times, are at odds with) with heirarchical structures like the state and the capitalist marketplace.

Ultimately, power corrupts, and any strong concentration of power moves towards greater concentration. In other words, "Welcome to the new economy, same as the old economy."

Our rights are lost as corporations consolidate, create bigger lobbies, and government bends over backwards to accomodate them. Things like DMCA don't come out of anywhere, and if corporations and the "power elite" (C.Wright Mills) truly believed in a free marketplace, then DMCA would never have been created.

So, you have us, the idealistic internet users, techies, free software advocates, etc., up against the biggest economic superpowers the world has ever known.

What do we do? How do we fight this?

Well, in one way, we've been doing really well in the realm of creating alternatives. Free software work, it works well, and it's not dependant on the NASDAQ for it's survival. Very good.

In other realms, we haven't done all that well. There's been talk about creating a "tech" lobby, but it's never really materalized. And could it even stand up to the hegemony of the lobbies that are already entrenched in Washington DC?

The EFF is a wonderful organization, but look at what they're up against. Look at how hard it is for the ACLU to influence lawmaking, and they've got a support base that's much larger than the EFF. The ACLU has written scathing reports on the threats to civil liberties that the USA-PATRIOT ACT (and the even scarier Illinois version), yet these are being pushed through without any consideration.

I think in order to properly preserve our rights, and more importantly, greatly *EXPAND* them, we need to abandon all notions that the market and the state are on our side, in any way shape or form.

Think in terms, not of what we want to oppose, but what we want. How should intellectual property be handled? Is it really *wrong* to reverse engineer something? Should a law stop us? If a law makes something illegal, can we create a technical solution to make it impossible to regulate (ie, gnutella/freenet?). What about a large project to create an internet service provider collective with incredibly cheap internet access? What about free internet access for everybody? Don't think we can do it? The hell we can't!

And furthermore, does this only affect us, or does it affect everybody? Why are we only preaching to the choir? How do these issues tie in to other issues that affect people?

Think about it. I hate to use the cliche, but we're gonna have to fight back. Sitting around on Slashdot, complaining about how we're losing our rights doesn't solve anything.

Maybe we should, to use the old syndicalist slogan, start building the new world in the shell of the old...

Dominion

Re:We're losing our rights... Now what?

[Soko]

Nice post. Good points for discussion:

I want this discussion to end. Not because it's not a valid discussion, but because conclusions have already been made.

Yup. Every time you use and/or improve an Open Source software package, you're drawing that conclusion nearer. As one William H. Gates III put it, "There is a particular approach that breaks the cycle (of freely developed software being commercialised) called the GPL that is not worth getting into today, but I don't think there is much awareness about how so-called free software foundations designed that to break that cycle."

Bill's right - we're breaking the system by accepting the validity (some would say neccesity) of giving away our time and intellectual resources to create things that cannot be forced into artificial scarcity, any who wish to use the fruits of this labour can do so - as long as they agree to only use it for the same purpose. IMHO, Richard Stallman didn't forsee or count on this, it's just a happy accident it turned out this way. There are many people who are (understandably, IMHO) terrified of the GPL - they think that they won't be able to put bread on the table if all software were open sourced, thier creativity would be squashed due to lack of funding and the world as they know it would generally come to an end. And as luck would have it, they're right.

The EFF is a wonderful organization, but look at what they're up against. Look at how hard it is for the ACLU to influence lawmaking, and they've got a support base that's much larger than the EFF. The ACLU has written scathing reports on the threats to civil liberties that the USA-PATRIOT ACT (and the even scarier Illinois version), yet these are being pushed through without any consideration.

I think in order to properly preserve our rights, and more importantly, greatly *EXPAND* them, we need to abandon all notions that the market and the state are on our side, in any way shape or form.

I'm Canadian, and can serve as a willing nom-de-plume for publishing code that's not allowed in the US. See how much US laws affect the process in reality? The laws the state makes are ineffectual, unless they can succesfully stifle communications in some way. And those are usually circumvented in short order, aren't they?

Think about it. I hate to use the cliche, but we're gonna have to fight back. Sitting around on Slashdot, complaining about how we're losing our rights doesn't solve anything.

Fine. Don't fight though - just continue on your merry OSS way then, but purposefully move along your way. Never mind the threats hurled at you, nor the corpses of any combatants you see along the way. To paraphrase someone, if you see damage, route around it. If we all move towards a goal with purpose, and never shy from obtaining the goal, who's to stop us?

Maybe we should, to use the old syndicalist slogan, start building the new world in the shell of the old...

Nope. We will just slowly replace the old world piece by piece, and push anything that doesn't fit in off the edge. The GPL puts software into the commons, kicking and screaming if needs be. Some will definately suffer huge economic losses - very unfortunate, but when you tear down a world to replace it with another, however slowly and carefully, damage happens. The world has already changed - the first bricks of the wall that has been built between a user, thier data and the ways to communicate thier data have already been chipped off. It is this scarcity of easy, inexpensive communications channels that has kept our world from being more about one to one than many to many. When we take control of these channels, and open them to any and all who have the curiosity to try, we put more people on the other side of the wall, and more bricks are chipped off. Eventually, the wall will give. We just need to make sure it comes down on the right heads.

As I've said before, we are the competition to the old economy - and competition at this level at times can get very, very ugly.

Soko

Re:difference between this and prohibition

[Lumpy]

you'rfe only limited because the general masses aren't smart enough to find different ways in.

Myself and 10 others have built a "internet" using wireless technology. we span over 10 square miles riht now with pockets of free-public access.

we do not announce who we are, to keep the broadband providers from opressing us. if we become big enough they will probably try to shut us down, but hopefully by then we'll have long distance and more redundant connections to thwart any attempts.

acess is always available... you just have to be clever enough to find it.