Net Neutrality and Democracy

I've been studying the concept of network neutrality since June. I do know one thing to be a relative certainty: net neutrality is inherently linked to free speech, not to mention the other things like commerce and politics. And I support net neutrality, not because it's what my political choice demands, or because someone else has somehow misinformed me, but because it simply and undeniably makes logical sense.

Common sense dictates that network neutrality is going to mean government regulation. That part is pretty much a given. And while I'm generally against regulations that are imprudent, this is a major case of consumer protection versus corporate interests. When given a choice like that, I'm forced to choose consumer protection almost every time (except in some cases, where it's clear that consumer protection would have minimal impact on consumers while inexorably damaging corporate ability to do business... and there are even exceptions to that, as well).

Regulations about network neutrality would limit corporate abilities to control traffic that didn't originate within their own networks. The Supreme Court in June of 2007 already ruled that companies may control their own network traffic, but specifically excluded traffic outside their network from being throttled or controlled. This was essentially what was already happening, but Comcast began throttling P2P traffic such as BitTorrent or Gnutella, and I actually know some of the people who first reported the story (and no, it wasn't the Associated Press reporters who blew the story wide open). And it's wrong, in spite of their aims.

This is non-neutrality, because it's preventing a type of legitimate traffic from being used. I've been trying to get the Ubuntu CD for over a month, and downloaded a few documentaries (one called "Route Irish," which was a good primer on what not to do during a protest), and because I believe in law, I don't like the idea of stealing the work of others, so I don't trade the RIAA's MP3s or Hollywood's movies (not that I would want to anyway... my tastes are much more refined than that). But I have a friend who told me he found and downloaded the entire "Transformers" movie in about two hours flat, only to find that it was mislabelled and home-produced gay porn. He and I are in the same neighborhood. If he can download his porn file which looked to be a copyrighted file from the outside, why can't I get my legal downloads to work? That's one drawback to net neutrality: trusting the gatekeepers.

So what's the big deal? Why is there so much hype about it? The answer is: corporate interest. The facts of the matter are that the corporations have generally been led to believe (quite incorrectly, I might add) that a neutral network means that so-called "smart" switches would not be permitted. However, the pro-neutrality people are in favor of "smart" switches, so long as they don't give favoritism to traffic based on financial considerations to or from the target site. If it was a radio station, it would already be considered illegal to do this, because this is the definition of payola in the radio system (which, admittedly, is a different medium).

However, the same logic should hold true: paying an ISP (as an example) to either throttle your competition or to not throttle your own connection with them, in addition to charging consumers to access the internet. This is precisely the kind of logic that many media industries employ in their rabid enforcement of copyright: when you take from both ends of the equation, you become rich. Except that we have a word for that. It's called exploitation.

Neutral networks mean that there is no censorship of the "slowing down traffic" kind on the net. Unlike print media, the internet requires neutrality in order to operate correctly. Simply slowing down traffic has the effect of discouraging the dissemination of information and can also be used by people such as your own political adversaries. Network neutrality requires that the flow of traffic be determined only by the limitations of the network, not the chosen limitation of commerce. However, companies do need to be able to "shape" traffic in order to manage a large network.

Oddly, this is not against network neutrality. A "smart" network is a happy network. Managed switches used ethically for the purposes of creating a network that flows smoothly and efficiently is within the interests of network neutrality, as well as corporate interests. It's when this shaping of networks becomes an excuse for limiting traffic to or from a site in the name of forcing profits that the shaping even becomes an issue. Net neutrality is about ethics reform, not about limiting the ability to ethically prioritize traffic in order to assist or increase network functionality. The concept is neutral, not anarchic.

The proponents of neutrality are sometimes criticized for not having a grip on the situation. I was trained at ITT Technical Institute (though I didn't graduate) and my last course of study was network administration. I can assure everyone: I have a very solid grip on the situation, the issue, and the consequences of both choices. And I choose neutrality because it simply makes better logical sense to protect against barriers to entry, and to promote a sound economic development of healthy competitive practices. Raising a required fee to every ISP in the world in order to ensure connectivity of one company's web site would only further the gap between the wealthy and poor companies of the world, rather than assisting in competitive practice.

To date, I have read some 400 documents about network neutrality, both for and against. Early on, I was against neutral networks because I understood that the argument was to be one of "smart" versus "unmanaged" networks. However, that argument is not, and has never been, the issue at all, in spite of the anti-neutrality folks' arguments to the contrary.

The issue of net neutrality is also not simply about consumer protection. It's about censorship. And censorship is contrary to our First Amendment. If we are to embrace democracy for our republic instead of allowing it to devolve into a despotic or fascist state, we must vigilantly protect the traditional rights our Founding Fathers laid out, with the intent in which these rights were specified.

The Necessity of Patents and Reform of Patent Laws

Patent law is something of a gigantic question for a lot of people. These people want to understand it. Most don't. But it's that kind of an attitude that really lends power to the people who want to take advantage of it. So let's begin by defining what I mean when I actually talk about a patent, and how it differs from copyright.

First of all, a patent is the idea that an invention was created by a specific individual or group. It differs from copyright in that patents are for things with practical applications. In fact, it wasn't until 1981 that the major problems of today with patent really started (though these are far from being the only problems), because of the software industry's insistence that a computer program is more than applied mathematics (which is, if you'll excuse the pun, patently untrue).

Computer software works by taking inputs (long strings of numbers), applying math to them (operations), and then creating outputs (more long strings of numbers). The electronic pulses that create a computer program are usually represented by ones and zeroes, representing "on" and "off" states of a computer's central processor. But in the end, all that switching and decision-tree-ing amounts to mathematical decision-making.

By allowing computer software to retain a patent, the Supreme Court has ultimately played a part in all of the abuse that consumers now enjoy because of the crossover between the three protections: copyright, patent, and trademark. The entire term "intellectual property" is actually a misnomer, because while it is created in the mind (by the intellect), there is no property until it has a practical application. In fact, the US PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) used to require a working prototype in order to receive a patent. Since that is no longer the case (since you can't really have a prototype for mathematical equations), patent is ultimately weakened. Making tougher laws to enforce patents has the inverse effect to the desired intent: it weakens all of the so-called "intellectual property" laws by linking to them.

Also, software is not a "practical" application. The word practical has in it the same roots as the word practice. By granting patents on software, we essentially grant a patent on a thought. You see, the word practical implies a practice which is action. Software is a virtual application; that is, it provides theoretical data the way that any complex mathematical function can. A computer monitor is little more than a graphing of those complex mathematical functions. However, graphing is action. Computation is action. The calculations themselves, which require a computer to operate, are non-action, and so should not be protected by patent. Copyright should be enough.

The word application in the software world is also potentially misleading: the connotation is that it is a practical application. However, the reality is that software only streamlines work and provides instructions based on mathematical formulae, rather than accomplishing any work itself. Before software was patented, mathematical equations could only be protected by copyright, and only then if they were published. The result is that there is a lot of confusion about the differences between copyright and patent. And now trademarks are starting to get blended.

In fact, the proponents of intellectual property laws often want the protections of all three of the different sets of laws on one production, rather than a good, strong protection of just one. That's because it ensures that they can control who makes the money and who doesn't. The problem is, in the process it kills the golden goose: people suddenly don't like patents or copyrighting or trademarking because it represents corporate greed and bullying. So they try to simply work without it, and refuse to have anything to do with the enforcement. In the process, they break the law simply trying to be consumers.

And also, since 1981, the practice of "shelving" patents has increased immensely. This practice is probably one of the most damaging that I can imagine. The reason behind shelving patents is simple: it buries competing technologies. For example, an idea for an engine that was entirely powered on water was devised in the 1930's, only to be rendered unusable by the powers in the government making money by keeping oil in the engines of the vehicles on our nation's roads at that time. The water engine worked, as it was demonstrated time and again. But it did not pass muster because of a patent system too weak to protect the individual who came up with it, and too strong to be countered for the right to build it at a later date.

And now anything can be patented. Life forms, business plans, and even book designs can be patented, because of the landmark decision by those in the Supreme Court which failed to take all of the future possibilities into account. The can of worms has been opened and it now seems that nothing can close it again. It creates the problem of non-viability within the patent system. Copyright is also in danger of becoming non-viable because of the way it's enforced. Trademark will follow suit.

Much of this has been speculated about (and special thanks to rms for this speculation, which I believe is spot on, though I'm still trying to gather proof for it) to have originated with the current people who want to lump copyrights, patents, and trademarks together under the heading of intellectual property in order to blend the protections offered by these three widely variant law structures so that all three apply to all creations at once. Organizations such as the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) are puppets of the entertainment media industry, who bullies companies and even governments into acting on behalf of their own interests. Their corruptive influence needs to be at an end. It's time for reforms in the laws that allow this influence in order to reduce the power of patents and restore the balance, and it's time for a stronger separation of patents, trademarks, and copyright.

Though I support Senator Obama in his bid for the Presidency, I will say that I disagree on the idea that expanding our influence overseas is a wise idea. I further believe that patent reforms accomplished will not serve to strengthen patents, but to weaken them by making patenting an undesirable option. We are already witnessing this trend in the draconian world of copyrights.

Balance, in this and all cases of copyright and patent, is key to the survival and continued viability of the systems affected. The imbalance is in the manner in which these things are required by the laws in place today to be enforced. Many copyright and patent enforcers make the claim that their right is fundamental, and that stronger protection means increases in the law for the duration, protections, and requirements to enforce.

Another imbalance exists where there is a barrier to entry, and this is less of a major problem than shelving is, but it's still an enormous issue and one that essentially creates "haves" and "have nots" where patents are concerned. While there are plenty of US patents available at Google Patent Search, there are not patents yet available from other countries, and so enforcing international patents can become an issue, particularly where the WIPO agreements our government claims to adhere to. I say "claims to adhere to" because the language of these agreements is highly subjective in English, and seems to lack an understanding of how patents actually need to work.

Barriers to entry create a chasm between rich and poor. In a capitalist wealth distribution system, there are rich and poor, but there are also a great number of people between. This "middle class" is the foundation for the entire economic structure of capitalism, and while it feels great to be rich, not everyone can be. If there were no barriers to wealth, then everyone would have the same amount of everything, and there would be little incentive to improve: this is a communist economy with perfect wealth distribution. Likewise, if the barriers to wealth were at every turn, there would only be "rich" and "poor" and this would become an imperialist economy instead of a capitalist one.

Capitalism needs a balance between rich and poor. It needs there to be the ability for poor people to make it big, and the risk of the rich to lose everything. It needs the middle class in order to show that progress can be made between rags and riches. But with patents, there is no equivalent. There's the "rich" patent-owners, and the "poor" non-owners, with very little way to bridge the gap, because many kinds of patents required (until 1981 or soon after) a working prototype. And now the gap is one of researching patents and paying an attorney to do all of the legal legwork of filling out the papers. It shouldn't need an attorney; however, with the sheer amount of litigation and exploitative practices happening, not having a lawyer is a liability.

Today, the US PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) requires very little in the way of proof that something works before a patent is issued. If the idea looks "viable enough" and is based on "provable principles" then a patent can be granted if it doesn't step on any other patents. And investors can fill the gap between the "haves" and "have-nots" where patents are concerned. But they still won't patent things like sex toys or perpetual-motion machines.

But therein lies the problem: some of the patents that the world actually needs most do not themselves make any money whatsoever. And many that could make money and promote the progress of mankind are sitting on a shelf somewhere, unusable until the patent expires and is not renewed. But a lot of these ideas could enhance other money-making ideas, or in other ways benefit humanity.

Then there are medical patents. In order to build a life-saving apparatus in the spur of the moment, many times you must violate a patent by combining pieces. While this is not the best approach to medicine, it is occasionally necessary to innovate well outside the norms of practice.

Patents are an enormous problem. And like copyrights, balanced approach to patents are essential to the continuation of a free and open society. So what can we really do about all of this? It's a complex answer with several simple solutions.

One solution is to abolish patents altogether and amend the US Constitution. However, this essentially sidesteps the issue, which will remain in spite of the amendment to the contrary. Trying to enforce this will essentially lead us down a very dark path away from the ideals of democracy, so this is not really an acceptable solution.

Another solution is to let them have their way until the population is so sick of patents that they shy completely away from anything to do with patents whatsoever. Again, this solution leads us away from democracy, and is despotic in nature.

A third solution might be to simply ignore patents until the burden of litigation so completely overwhelms the courts that lawmakers are more or less forced to reduce patents. Again, this isn't a great solution, because lawmakers don't respond well to being forced into anything (nor do any of us, really). Lawmakers are human, too.

A fourth solution is to try to accomplish something similar to what has occurred with the Creative Commons and GPL licenses for patents, but again this isn't really as viable for patents as it is for copyright. There are certain ideas that these could work for, and certain things they would not work for.

As a fifth solution, we might also completely scrap the patent system in favor of a new one. Right. Like Congress would ever even give this thought serious consideration.

The sixth solution, and the one I personally favor, is to simply reform patent law back to its original state, sweeping all so-called "progress" in patent law away. Sweeping changes like this, I'll have to admit, aren't a fun thought for me. Rapid changes can destabilize things. However, sweeping changes like this could be accomplished with a minimum impact on stability in as little as 7 years. That's less than two presidential terms.

As you can see, there are quite a number of sides to this debate, and it's likely to continue for a very long time before anything gets done. While not as core to civil liberties as copyright, patent is still a very major issue and a balanced system is still tied to civil liberties.

A Sense of Community

I finally just got sick to death of Windows. It's not that I don't think the world uses it, and it's certainly not that I don't like the bloated eye-candy interface. But it's slow, unstable as a bipolar high school cheerleader on crack, and the only programs that work really well are the ones made by Microsoft.

Except for OpenOffice.org, that is. I downloaded the free office suite from OpenOffice's web site, and I began using it. Except for not importing Microsoft's latest file formats (which my $400 copy of Office 2003 didn't do, either), it seems to work great, and can both pull in from and save to a variety of file formats. And it saves to PDF files, too. All for free. And available for both Windows and Linux. After using OpenOffice for the better part of a year (with few exceptions), I have had zero problems with data loss due to the switchover (but, dear reader, please remember to make backups before you decide to do anything that changes the way your system works).

Over the past 5 years, I've either paid for or received as payment for some of my freelance work about $12,000 in software for my Windows machine. Occasionally, I've received a duplicate license for software I've already had, but I didn't count any of that. The $12,000 (give or take a couple hundred) in software was software I actively used. And I just replaced all but one program of that by switching to Ubuntu.

The word Ubuntu is a Zulu word for 'Community', though there are lots of other meanings. The word implies that if you see a need, you fill it if you can. Likewise, you should be able to expect assistance when you need it. Community is important, and as a traditional value of all cultures, the word Ubuntu (though it comes from only one culture in South Africa) is truly a universal concept, and one that isn't difficult to grasp.

However, I began a little seriously worried because there are a lot of programs out there which are named in a similar utopian style, and they routinely fall short because not enough people actually want to make it work. However, Ubuntu has started and maintained a community which is friendly to beginners, and which offers that which is needed, if you merely look for it.

Community is the foundation to democracy. When everyone is working toward a goal, whether it's as broad as democracy or as versatile as an operating system, the only solution to any of this is to work toward the same goal. Being one community is called solidarity and this is one of the things that Ubuntu is about (both the concept and the operating system).

Accessibility is a big issue when making the switch to a GNU/Linux system such as Ubuntu. And without this accessibility, there wouldn't be an operating system I could use. But one thing that Ubuntu is lacking in is price. My $12,000 of software on my $1,000 computer is now $0 in software on my $1,000 computer, and I have the same functionality with only 4 days of downtime (well, except for Skype, which doesn't have an AMD-64 version for my version of Ubuntu yet, so aside from my not being able to talk to a couple of my clients, everything else is working great).

Which brings me to another democratic concept: government transparency. Like the software industry, the government jealously hoards the things that make it work, shrouded in layers of unnecessary secrecy and inaccessibility. Don't forget that Bush was nearly assassinated on 9/11 by a group of foriegn nationals, so I can understand where he's coming from, though I disagree with how he's going about protecting himself. But I also disagree with the way that software companies tend to rabidly protect their intellectual property, as well. The way the laws work right now creates a draconic system that encourages animosity and which is counterproductive to the aims of creativity, invention, and progress. If software companies released the source code for versions of programs they were no longer supporting, it would allow everyone to benefit: users and producers both would benefit from the increase in security that the open source community undoubtedly would bring to the program.

But there are drawbacks to open source. I'm sure of it. Uhm.... Never mind, I'll have to get back to everyone on that. Let's talk about the drawbacks to closed source.

The main drawback is Microsoft. I'm not saying their products are bad, but the big problem is that they don't publish a lot of their internal standards, and the fact that they don't release source code on anything (and encourage others to resist the open source movement as well) is a sticking point because other programmers can't learn what they're doing wrong, nor can they help Microsoft understand where their own shortcomings are.

The Open Source folks are right about a lot of things, and community is one of them. Solidarity is another. But where they routinely fall short is in action. Their ability to act cohesively is impressive, but it takes a monumental undertaking to get them interested in anything long-term or far-reaching. Basically, the bulk of the work needs to be done first, and then other programmers will weigh in with their code and review. At least, that's the general practice behind projects that I've seen.

So then we get back to how this relates to democracy. Not all communities are democracies, but all democracies have, as their basis, communities. The differences that we all have add to the diversity that's the strength of democracy everywhere. Even those who dissent add value by giving a counterpoint to the consenus, which spurs thought and gives us all something to think about. Well, at least, when it's real dissent and not just naysaying for the purpose of being a dissenting voice. This is another point I've noticed in the Open Source collection of communities: dissent for the sake of dissent. Dissent has a purpose, and that purpose is to point out a weakness so that it can be addressed. Ultimately, dissent will either logically reduce an idea to allow everyone to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks, or it will simply dissemble an idea by tearing it down with emotional arguments that have no real bearing on whether or not it will work. Of course, there is a time for that, but usually only when there is something in the way of an ethical issue. Tearing an idea down simply to tear it down is itself unethical in a democracy.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that most of my Linux experiences have brought me: a bunch of teasing and ribbing and unhelpful suggestions by people too busy to really help. I will say that there were two exceptions: the BSD community (which was my introduction to open source and free software, but which didn't work out because I'm not a programmer and production schedules didn't allow me time to read enough to make it work), and the Fedora community (which simply seemed to ignore me altogether). I made it a point to test the waters before I made the switch, and the help that I received from the Ubuntu community's forums was not only top-notch, it was support from other users, both beginners and experts alike. And now I can keep to my production deadlines while at the same time reading minimally about how my system works. And I can play with it, break it, fix it, and modify it. It's not Windows, in that there isn't a lot of hand-holding built into the system, but with an entire community active, there's not a lot of reason for it to be built in.

I actually got told that building community was akin to inviting communism one time. However, in communism there isn't a guaranteed individual ownership of property (and I don't just mean land). There is no means for someone to exceed their beginning station in life. There's no progress. People are not free to be creative and express new and (sometimes) spectacular ideas. People can't progress unless they're guaranteed both an equal footing in life and the chance to earn more, with the guarantee of creative license. People should be free to make even bad choices, because in these bad choices is the opportunity to learn. In a communist society, fascism tends to reign supreme, not because only fascists are communists, but because the entire system of communism invites stagnation .

In a democracy, people must be guaranteed the right to be creative. They have to have the right to speak against the government. They need the tools to be able to resist the government's interference in their own lives, because that's the only way that a balance between liberalism and conservatism can be maintained. An extreme conservative is a fascist (that's actually the definition: fascism is an extreme version of conservatism); and an extreme liberal is a libertarian. I've heard people tell me there are no moderates, but I'm about as moderate as they get. I believe in personal freedom, but I also believe in government. I am an extreme moderate, and the term for that is egalitarian.

The vote that people get in a communist society (one which is ideally run) counts only for declaring that a person agrees or disagrees with society. It holds no real power because in a perfectly communist state, there is no individuality: everything belongs to the community, including the individual. In a democracy, on the other hand, the community comes together because it needs and wants community. And this is why I love Ubuntu: not many people are there who don't really want to be.

The result is an open, free, and democratically-run operating system which is responsive to end user needs because the end users are the ones in charge of its development.

If only the RIAA, ASCAP and MPAA (and those who are like them) could learn that the power of popular opinion is the way to profit. They now understand that they don't have the same power that the public has. They don't control popular opinion, and any idea that they did was an illusion. For a brief moment in history, we're going to have physical media. From here on, it's digital. The community itself has spoken in cases like Jammie Thomas, Tanya Andersen, Granny Crain, and the other victims of exploitation by the system. The MAFIAA organizations are not in public favor, and it seems that their entire existence has hinged on the control over media that they've never had until recently. And now that they've got it, they're failing even faster.

And, strangely enough, the RIAA claims there was an increase in revenues at a time when there was a corresponding increase in what they've decided to label as media piracy. The shortcoming in this case is that there is no real community built by the RIAA, ASCAP, MPAA, or any of the others. Sure, there's a consumer base to draw from, but that's not the same thing. Their general draconism and fascist ideals seem to fly in the very face of democracy. And consumers know and understand this, particularly the newest generation of consumers who start buying their own music as early as age 12. Most people I know who download music do so because they don't have money to buy, but as soon as they do get money, they generally go out and get the real thing, because ownership in the new culture is a status symbol, and is thought of in a much better light than mere possession. It's a pity the RIAA doesn't allow ownership.

Because ownership would build communities of artists, rather than driving them away.

Silly fascists. Music's for playing!

The MAFIAA’s Biggest Mistake

Okay, so sue me. I've changed my mind about the articles I'm publishing. The MAFIAA is an organization whose operations would normally be counted as criminal.

No, I'm not talking about the Italians, the Russians, or the Mexicans; nor is this a misspelling. I'm talking about the Music And Film Industry Associations of America (MAFIAA), which includes the RIAA, MPAA, ASCAP, and a host of others based here in the United States, with hundreds of foreign counterparts between them which are funded by our patronage. The idea of stealing music that has been purchased isn't a new one, but it certainly is the foundation for the tens of thousands of lawsuits that the RIAA has specifically been found to be doing.

But the biggest mistake has been not listening to their consumers. Hundreds of millions of people (up to 15% of all internet users, which equates to about 10% of the world's population, if my figures are right) use file-sharing technologies such as BitTorrent, Gnutella, and a host of other lesser-known ones. Some actually use it legally, though the MAFIAA wants us to believe that any unauthorized use is (or should be) illegal. They've spent 55 years trying to prove that, well against the tide of consumer desire.

And they've made their consumers into their biggest enemies. Without understanding why, their prosecution of Jammie Thomas has led to their being boycotted. And now there are studies completed in Canada that show that there's a positive impact on music sales, rather than a negative impact.

So why are they still pushing to make it a criminal offense?

It's never really been about money. I realized this for the first time this past summer when ASCAP went after online radio and won, and then used that win to go after radio stations. Though they use financial means and excuses, the real issue here is control of a population that cannot be controlled. When the MAFIAA first got really organized back in the 1970's, they wanted us to believe that recording public broadcasts was illegal. The Supreme Court disagreed. And now the claims are the same, but the argument is different. Reading through the legal materials I have access to, the claims they make aren't much better. But what I do see is a government rapidly losing the high ground because they refuse to back up ordinary citizens' rights. Citizens like Ms. Thomas, a single mother who didn't even know she was being sued for months and months.

The main error here is that citizens' rights have historically trumped those of any big business, with the exception of the past 3 decades. The anti-consumerism prevalent in the courts today is the product of a huge campaign of both outright lies and misrepresentations of the truth. It's based on faulty data that nobody can seem to produce. And in fact, they've been rather tight-lipped about methodologies used, and speculation by many of the so-called pirates seems to be that they hide it because they have something to hide.

And yet they persist. If it's not about money, what's it really about?

Control.

Plainly and simply, they want to hold all the keys to all the locks on all the doors and gates. They want to be able to be the ones who determine what is or is not fair use, and they want to make sure that only those who have money are allowed to make that determination. This effectively creates a minority. It makes the average consumer unable to listen to music unless they pay for it. In their world, there would be no more radio, no internet that they didn't control, and we'd all be at their mercy as far as which web sites we visited. Subliminal messages wouldn't be illegal, though cussing up a storm would be unless it was paid for on an audio track.

The MAFIAA organizations want to make us their slaves. And I, for one, am against that.

But so are millions of others, including artists. Artists like Radiohead (independently), and Lamont (sponsored by The Pirate Bay) are starting to be increasingly aware of the level of control associated with these organizations, and they seem to be out to prove that they have what it takes to make it without the big labels. Radiohead's cancellation of their contract with EMI records, for example, is a sign that things could change. The refined studio sound is something that consumers have been moving away from for years, and this is the main sign that big-name labels should have taken for a death knell. But they can't attack individual artists for producing their own music.

The internet has changed society. Some changes have been for better, and some for worse, but the bottom line is that change was inevitable. The entire generation of Internet users who have grown up online are now entering adulthood, and they're beginning to realize just how easy it is to spot exploitative practices. Most that I've spoken to seem to be anti-corporate, which is a warning sign in my mind that big corporations are about to become a thing of the past if they don't start acting like adults instead of crying to Congress that their consumers are taking their toys away.

The failure of these companies to treat their people the way they themselves would want to be treated is a sure sign that they are caught up in issues of money instead of in good business practices. As anyone in the franchise business knows, you should leave the majority of the profits to the owner of the franchise, and take a smaller slice of a large number of pies. Instead, they've taken most of the pie before it's even given, and when they don't make money, they charge artists for the extended money they've given. Then, when they manage to sell something to consumers, they are selling for roughly three to five times what it cost to produce the package (and only 30% of that is typically intermediaries). They're the biggest, meanest dogs on the block, and their marketing model is failing miserably to cash in.

So what does any of this have to do with democracy?

Put bluntly: the people in these organizations are anti-democracy. Their conservatism crossed the line into fascism long ago, and with that change they began to lobby Congress to pass laws that are still awaiting the test of Constitutionality. Because they are self-serving and greedy, they inspire a lack of cooperation and even rebellion against them. And with their complicit behaviors, Congress is also inspiring dissent and the seeds of rebellion have been planted. This becomes dangerous when people learn how to counteract disruption techniques that the government does on a regular basis to break up smaller groups.

The current US Administration's tendency to be self-serving is also showing up in poll after poll that places Bush at the bottom of the heap. People just don't feel as though the government serves them anymore. And in this, I agree with Barack Obama. But what I don't agree with is that the government has become anti-democracy. Those in the government I've spoke to believe that by serving these companies, they ultimately protect the national product of the United States, which in turn offers citizens a better quality of life. Though this isn't actually true, it is logical. In practice, what happens is that we erode our civil liberties with five very wrong Acts of Congress (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the NET Act of 1997, the USA-PATRIOT Act of 2001, and the acts of Congress passed earlier this year which essentially strip any expectation of privacy we can enjoy in our communications).

We can ill-afford to simply ignore the Constitution. We don't have the right any more, for example, to photocopy a page from a book for research purposes. We can't show off a woodcut out of an old out-of-print book because someone might still own the copyright. We are no longer allowed to creatively derive anything from music. We can't make backups of music or software CD's, and wear out the backups instead of the originals. All of that in the United States is illegal.

Fair use under the law is basically no more. There are some limited fair use rights, but the long history of traditional fair use is now illegal. This is an erosion of free expression (and therefore, free speech), and it deserves our attention. We should work to change laws over time to return these individual rights, so that the music industry can continue to create products we enjoy. We should encourage the music industry to make radical changes to their model in order to encourage artists to produce, rather than discouraging them from producing elsewhere. We should point out the exploitations against us, because if the population as a whole is saying something, the government must listen. If it doesn't, it's no longer a democracy.

Republican democracy or no, our country is at a turning point in its history. Either we'll continue to become one of the most open and creative societies in existence, or we will make ourselves into the new Soviet Union, fooling ourselves into believing we're the best simply because we said so and we have one or two nice things that don't actually balance the ills that occur.

Make no mistake: the enemy is not government, nor even big business in general, but these few specific organizations and individuals who insist on changing the laws to accommodate their practices which would be criminal if they were anyone else. The enemy is the fascist mindset that every aspect of everything must be controlled, and that individual rights have no meaning in the face of (and I quote) "larger interests".

The very definition of fascism is that individual rights are secondary to state interests, as it was defined by "Grandfather" Mussolini. Today, the word fascist is considered a political slur, but the truth of the matter is that these organizations and individuals are indeed acting fascist, according to the definition. At the time, we were against Mussolini, and we took out his regime fairly efficiently. Democracy will always win, if it's organized enough to care. Individuals can care, but until we get organized as consumers and voters to take back our government, we are not deserving of democracy and will continue to lose to fascism until there's nothing recognizably democratic about the way we operate. We're headed to become just like China, and I (for one) don't think that's really a democracy, in spite of what their constitution says.

An Essay On Privacy in the USA

Yes, this is a long post. But, I hope, worth it.

The claim that privacy is not a Constitutionally-guaranteed right is a valid one, since the word "privacy" is not used anywhere in any of the documents our Founding Fathers used as the basis for the Constitution. But the facts of the matter are that we are still guaranteed a level of privacy in that the government isn't supposed to be able to snoop into any kind of private affairs without both due process and a warrant. This raises the question of warrantless wiretapping and creates an issue of Constitutionality. Yet our president maintains that we're not afforded a right to privacy under the United States Constitution. I happen to disagree, and here's why:

The definition of privacy in the Constitutional context is to be free from intrusion, interference, or influence of government in our personal spaces. This includes communications, and the sovereignty of a person within their home. However, a warrant can be issued that temporarily suspends that right if there is a probable cause or provable belief that something illegal is happening. Thus, the government's ace-in-the-pocket is to have a warrant before they invade what is essentially sovereign space. We need an oath or affirmation that they believe something is happening, and that's the only purpose they can be there for.

For example, if a police officer believes that there is a drug dealer living in a certain apartment, that officer can swear out a warrant for the property which covers drugs, drug residues, drug paraphernalia, weapons, and the drug dealer himself. The officer then typically knocks politely on the door (and occasionally uses a battering ram for knocking not-so-politely when they require the element of surprise to prevent the stashing of drugs), and enters the property. But let's say that instead of drugs, they find an illegal gambling operation instead. The officer didn't specify any gambling equipment, and his discovery precludes him from being able to use what he sees as evidence against the occupants in a legal case. In spite of the fact that he sees illegal activity, he cannot place anyone under arrest, and he has to disregard anything he sees that isn't contained in the warrant.

But in recent years, officers have received expanded power that allow them to "camp" on the spot and obtain another warrant for the new criminal activity while they wait. So it's not drugs, but the occupant of the property is still likely going to jail for breaking the law, this time on a somewhat lesser charge, in the eyes of most citizens.

The original intent was that officers should obtain solid proof before the fact. They should have enough of an idea of what's happening that such a mistake isn't made in the first place. The fact that there was a lot of traffic in and out of the property is a sign that something is happening, it's true, but the real question is whether or not that the something is illegal activity, such as drugs. Officers are no longer allowed to use their own judgment under the law, because the people have learned that police forces can be sued. What this means is that there is an "us versus them" mentality, and one which should not be acceptable. Officers should respect the dignity and sanctity of a person's home enough to get all of the facts before they enter.

Governmental intrusion into a person's home is still relatively rare here in the United States. In other countries, where there is no protection, officers may walk in at will. England is the only country in the world where individual privacy has been held to a higher standard than ours, and still has a long way to go in order to afford a level of autonomy that allowed democracy to take root. You see, privacy is so fundamental and so basic a need for democracy that any encroachment on individual privacy from government intrusion at any level, or by anyone in a position of power should be considered an assault on democracy as a whole. By removing the ability of people to be private in their own homes, we effectively prevent the very thing that creates democracy: free thought.

Knowing that the police cannot simply barge in on you for no reason is a comfort that only those in a democracy can know. Such relaxation allows individuals to arrive at thoughts they would not normally be able to have. Having lived in an area where privacy was not permitted to this extent, I can say that it alters one's ability to think clearly and rationally about things. But on the flip side of that coin, it also enhances some kinds of neuroses, so too much sanctity probably isn't a good thing. However, people who live in a home should not expect privacy from one another, because of the nature of living together. The expectation should be that those in power cannot intrude at will, be they landlords, employers, businesses, or government. The sanctity of the home has been upheld numerous times and in numerous ways, and yet the Bush Administration persists in its insistence that there's nothing wrong with warrant-less wiretapping. The expectation has been set, they say, that our private communications are now forfeit. Such intrusion is against the Constitution.

The Fourth Amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

This is essentially the entire scope of the right to privacy in the United States. But we need to look at the original intent in order to really understand what they meant.

First and foremost, the security of a person against unreasonable search and seizure means that unless officers have a clear idea that a person is carrying something illegal, they cannot simply search that person. They must first obtain a warrant to go through someone's pockets. I see this provision violated all the time on television cop shows, though it's justified because officers were looking for weapons instead of the drugs they found. Well, no warrant, no arrest. They can confiscate the drugs as contraban, but the real issue here is that unless they had reasonable suspicion that someone was actually carrying the drugs, the drugs should be inadmissible in court. As detrimental to society as that sounds to some people, the price of democracy is that right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure. Please note that it does not say "government" anywhere in the Fourth Amendment: this implies that the freedom is inalienable, and applies to pretty much anyone.

The right to be secure in their houses against unreasonable search and seizure means that nobody (government or otherwise) can intrude on a person's home. Police seem to believe that if an individual citizen makes a discovery, that's admissible in court. In general, I tend to agree. However, if someone enters a property with the intent of informing the police or other authority about anything in there, then they are acting in the capacity of infringing upon a person's privacy. A person's home should be inviolate, and this intent that I mentioned means that they are acting on the authority of those in power. It means this shouldn't be admissible in court, period.

The right to be secure in one's papers means that personal items, identity documents, correspondence, and other items that aren't really anyone else's business should be kept away from the eyes of those who don't really have a compelling need. The real sinker here is the implication of correspondence. In my estimation, all communications have the right to be free from interference and intrusion by those in power. You can't operate a business if nothing you do is private. You can't operate a political party if your competition is in power, particularly if you want to prevent those in power from overrunning the freedoms you enjoy. If you have a secret that you want to hold until an opportune time, it should be allowed under the Fourth Amendment, if you're one of the people to which the rights are ascribed.

The last part, the right to be secure in one's effects, is intended to be a catch-all. Today, personal effects include computer data, which could also be construed as being one's papers. The Founding Fathers wanted to ensure that people could pass along information freely. They also wanted to ensure that someone's personal effects couldn't be seized. With the USA-PATRIOT Act in full swing, seizures of small personal effects (like granny's nail clippers at an airport) became the norm. I suspect that in spite of that fact, the seizures in such cases are unreasonable.

An interesting quote to round some of the point up and link it to the next bit is given to us by Thomas Jefferson, one of our Founding Fathers, in 1787 (this would be 11 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and shortly after the ratification of the US Constitution), in a letter to William Smith: "[W]hat country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?"

In order to secure a free democracy, privacy is (as I've already said) fundamental. The government is worried about home-grown terrorists and those plotting against the administration in violent ways, it says, but the fact of the matter is that the more we impede individual rights to privacy, the more people find ways to circumvent any system put into place that violate it. By preserving the right to privacy in the first place, we effectively deny any refuge to those plotting violence for any time, except if they start acting secretively. The difference between maintaining privacy and being secretive is a semantic one, to be sure, but one which bears attention. I'll use the 9/11 attacks as an example of this principle.

On the morning on September 11th, 2001, six journalists approached President Bush's hotel in Florida. It was six in the morning, well before any of the attacks later in the day occurred. Nobody was aware that anything special was about to occur. These journalists claimed to have scheduled a poolside interview with President Bush, but they did not appear on the schedule for that day (nor any other). The journalists were denied access on that basis. The Secret Service, in protecting the privacy of the president from the media (who is very much in power, in spite of some opinions to the contrary), they ultimately saved his life. You see, these six journalists were all of Middle-Eastern descent, and they matched the descriptions of people who, only days before, has succeeded in assassinating a leader in Pakistan (if memory serves... I could be wrong on this, and I didn't look up my facts, because the location isn't really important to the point).

Later that day, 3,300 people died. This does not include the 200 who died in one embassy bombing a few years before, nor the 2,000 who died in airline terrorism in the previous decade, or the nearly-100 soldiers who had died in the line of duty, or any of the countless other civilians who have died for the cause of furthering terror in our homeland, or who were US citizen... and this doesn't include those who were citizens of other countries either. I'll put the number on it of 10,000 Americans dying by the directives of one terrorist leader. By comparison, Bush is indirectly responsible for the deaths of some 35,000 civilians, most of whom were killed accidentally because they didn't conform to rules we'd tried to notify everyone about. Our soldiers are fighting a war that had nothing to do with terrorism until we got involved.

But I digress. In the weeks and months that followed, it became clear that our very way of life is offensive to these people. They attacked us because their leader uses an unpopular religious philosophy to justify political activity. In the 1700's, we called such acts piracy, and the thought of the day was that we would simply pay them off and they'd leave us along. Except that they didn't. So, in 1799, we wiped out the Barbary Pirates. We didn't declare war. We didn't tell anyone or brag about it. We expressed sorrow that we had to do it, in fact. We didn't invoke any kind of rights or make any new laws. Congress didn't really get involved. President Jefferson simply declared them enemies of the state, and we went and sank their ships. Every one. We didn't stop to discuss terms of surrender. To this day, our policy is that we don't negotiate with terrorists. Terrorists only understand one language: terror. We kill terrorists, rather than negotiate. That's been the policy for 208 years as of this writing, and always has. The war we've been waging in the Middle East is a mockery of not only this policy, but of the entire system of democracy.

The only accomplishment of Bush's administration, really, is the significant erosion of civil rights by bullying his way through the courts and Congress to get his way. People just don't think that it's true, until they are personally affected. Bush did exactly what good old Ben Franklin warned us about: he traded our civil liberties for temporary measures designed to increase security. Today, our civil liberties are diminished, and the security promised by the USA-PATRIOT Act has yet to surface. We're at a constantly-high state of alert in our country. The real threat is not from al-Qaeda or even domestic terrorism: it's the man occupying the office of President of the United States. The Presidential office is one I respect and even uphold in my daily conversations with people. But I've lost significant respect for the person in that office. Shame on you, George!

If Bush had really been looking out for the security of our country, he would have given us measures to protect ourselves. He would not have decreased the ability of our population to speak to one another, but would instead have armed us with correct information about what was really happening. He was not interested in upholding democracy; he was interested only in his own bottom line.

There's another organization that operates like this: the RIAA. Their recent activities with Jammie Thomas show that they not only are really concerned with controlling the popular tastes. They aren't interested in truth, or justice, or even money. What they want is power. And powerful they are: they recently assisted in a bid to try to cut radio at the knees. Combined with an overabundant consolidation of radio networks, we're really at kind of a loss as to how to keep radio going unless we protect it. And radio stations are actually the basis of our telecommunications infrastructure, so their importance cannot be understated. But that's for another post.

The RIAA uses techniques that invade privacy. Cary Sherman, the president of the RIAA, claims that any idea that using software to intercept communications which are then used to secretly obtain the names of people who may never be notified so that they can prepare an adequate defense and preserve their own evidence, is "bizarre" (and that's a direct quote). The RIAA is in power. Heck, it's even on the right side of the law. But the one thing that they are lacking is a sense of ethical and dignified treatment of people. Their aggressive tactics only alienate them, and people already know that what they do isn't defending the artists' rights, because the companies associated with the RIAA typically take all rights to any work that the artist produces in exchange for marketing that to the public. And as we all know, the artists' main venue (the main way for artists to make money) is with public performance. If I see someone performing music or dance (or both) and I'm in a position to give them something of value, I give it. If it's a penny or a dollar, it doesn't matter: every little bit helps. I think I've given a twenty to a performing artist before.

But many people don't want performance. They want digitally-enhanced music that they aren't able to play without a license, to the point that if they're playing a car stereo too loudly they can be sued for public performance. Or if another artist has a take on the song, it cannot be performed publicly, because the song is copyrighted. Every time we sing "Happy Birthday," we infringe copyright. Such a standard inhibits our innovation through derivative works. It stifles our cultural pride. It reduces us. It is a direct threat on our freedom of thought and belief, and an attack on the Constitutionally-mandated Congressional duty to promote innovation. True, they are supposed to protect these works, but not at the cost of innovation.

But the most offensive portion of all is that if someone is playing a song too loudly on the stereo (a song, I might add, being broadcast freely by a radio station), then that person is also considered a copyright infringer. The sanctity of the home no longer exists under this new copyright regime. We come up short every time we try to fight it. Well, no more. Groups like the Pirate Party of the United States and the rapidly-growing media piracy movement have had enough. Many of us are also fighting back individually. People like Jammie Thomas are likely going to prove to be the rule and not the exception.

Pirates in history did evil things, like murder, rape, kidnapping, pillaging, plundering, ransoming, and enslaving people. Now pirates do even worse things, like copyright infringement.

Gimme a fucking break.

It's time for a mutiny. But unlike mutinies of the past, where people often got the idea of killing or dumping off the captain of the ship somewhere, this mutiny is one of democracy. And it takes votes. If you're not a registered voter, you're unwittingly working for the likes of the RIAA and the others in the copyright regime. Voter registration isn't hard. It's also not expensive, since a postage stamp is less than half a dollar to mail in a voter registration form to anywhere in the country. State voter registration is where this fight can and will be won. And it's the only way. We can't simply raid the RIAA's headquarters. We're not that kind of pirates.

We're computer geeks. We're artists. We're scholars. We're inventors. We use these things to keep ourselves separate. But in the end, the only thing linking us is the fact that we're sick to death of not being able to maintain the sanctity of our home and the privacy of our communications. If we don't exercise our rights within the law, then we shall find ourselves outlawed. The right of the people to be safe needs to exist again. And unless we hold the threat of removing those in power from those very comfortable and lofty seats, we are powerless to stop them.