levels of copyright. A cable leaked by WikiLeaks in December 2010 outlined a checklist given to the Swedish government with demands from the US copyright industry, IIPA. The US Embassy was quite appreciative of how the Swedish justice department was “fully on board” and had made considerable progress on the demands against its own citizens, in favor of the US copyright industry.
In those demands were pretty much every Big Brother law enacted in the past several years. Data retention, Ipred, three-strikes, police access to IP records for petty crimes, abolishment of the mere conduit messenger immunity, everything was in there.
The copyright industry is actively driving a Big Brother society, as it understands that this path is the only way to save copyright. It’s time to throw that industry out of the legislative process.
One of the primary demands of the Pirate Party is that the same laws that apply offline, should also apply online. This is an entirely reasonable thing to demand. The Internet is not a special case, but part of reality. The problems appear when an obsolete but powerful industry realizes that this just and equal application of laws means that they can’t enforce their distribution monopoly any longer.
To understand the absurdity of the copyright industry’s demands, we must pause and consider which rights we take absolutely for granted in the analog world. These are rights that already apply in the digital part of reality as well, but are somehow hidden in a legal game of hide-and-seek.
Let’s look at what rights I have when I communicate through analog channels with somebody – using paper, a pen, an envelope, and a stamp. The same rights should apply when using a digital communications channel instead, at least theoretically, since the law doesn’t differentiate between methods of communication. Unfortunately for the copyright industry, the enforcement of our rights online would mean that the copyright monopoly becomes utterly unenforceable, so the copyright industry is now attacking these fundamental rights on every level. But that doesn’t mean our rights aren’t there.
When I write a letter to somebody, I and I alone choose whether I identify myself in the letter inside the envelope, on the outside of the envelope, both, or neither. It is completely my prerogative whether I choose to communicate anonymously or not. This is a right we have in analog communications and in law; it is perfectly reasonable to demand that the law applies online as well.
When I write a letter to somebody, nobody has the right to intercept the letter in transit, break its seal and examine its contents unless I am under formal, individual and prior suspicion of a specific crime. In that case, law enforcement (and only them) may do this. Of course, I am never under any obligation to help anybody open and interpret my letters. It is perfectly reasonable to demand that this applies online as well.
When I write a letter to somebody, no third party has the right to alter the contents of the letter in transit or deny its delivery. Isn’t it perfectly reasonable to demand that this applies online as well?
When I write a letter to somebody, nobody has the right to stand at the mailbox and demand that they log all my communications: who I am communicating with, when, and for how long. Again, to demand that this applies online as well would only be logical.
When I write a letter to somebody, the mailman carrying that letter to its recipient is never responsible for what I have written. He has messenger immunity. And yes, it is perfectly reasonable to demand that this applies online as well.
All of these fundamental rights are under systematic attack by the copyright industry. They are suing ISPs and demanding that they install wiretapping and censoring equipment in the middle of their switching racks. They are constantly gnawing at messenger immunity (mere conduit and common carrier principle), they are demanding the authority to identify people who communicate, they want the authority to deny us our right to exercise fundamental rights at all, and they have the nerve to suggest censorship to safeguard the distribution monopoly.
All of the above stems from the fact that any digital communications channel that can be used for private correspondence, can also always be used to transfer digitizations of copyrighted works – and you can’t tell which is which without giving the copyright industry the right to break the seal of private correspondence, which is a right the Pirate Party is not prepared to surrender.
These are civil liberties that our forefathers fought, bled, and died to give us. It is beyond obscene that an obsolete middleman industry is demanding that we give up our rights to preserve an entertainment monopoly, and demanding more powers than we are even giving the police to catch real criminals. Then again, this is nothing new.
When photocopiers arrived in the 1960s, book publishers tried to have them banned on the grounds that they could be used to copy books which would then be sent in the mail. Everybody told the publishers tough luck: While the copyright monopoly is still valid, they have no right to break the seal on communications just to look for copyright infringements, so they can’t do anything about it. That still applies offline. It is perfectly reasonable to demand that it applies online as well.
The copyright industry sometimes complains that the Internet is a lawless land and that the same laws and rights that apply offline should apply online as well. In this, the Pirate Party could not agree more.
But unfortunately, what is happening is the opposite. Corporations are trying to take control over our communications tools, citing copyright concerns. Frequently, they are assisted by politicians who are also aspiring for the same control, citing terrorist concerns or some other McCarthyist scare word of the day. We should see this in perspective of the revolts that happened in 2011 in the Arab world.
There is a blind trust in authority here that is alarming. The ever-increasing desire to know what we talk about and to whom, and that desire is displayed openly by corporations and politicians alike, is a cause for much concern. To make matters worse, it is not just a matter of eavesdropping. Corporations and politicians openly want – and get – the right to silence us.
The copyright industry is demanding the right to kill switches to our very communications. If we talk about matters disruptive enough, disruptive according to authorities or according to the copyright industry, the line goes silent. Just twenty years ago, this would have been an absolutely horrifying prospect. Today, it is reality. Don’t believe it? Try talking about a link to The Pirate Bay on MSN or on Facebook and watch as silence comes through. The copyright industry is fighting for this to become more pervasive. So are some politicians with agendas of their own.
While the copyright industry and repressive Big Brother politicians may not share the same ultimate motives, they are still pushing for exactly the same changes to society and control over our communications.
At the same time, citizens’ physical movements are tracked to street level by the minute and the history recorded.
How would you revolt with all this in place, when all you said just fell silent before reaching the ears of others, and the regime could remotely monitor who met whom and where, and when they could kill all your equipment with the push of a button?
The West hardly has any high moral ground from where to criticize China or the regimes that are falling in the Arab world.
And yet, in all this darkness, there is a counter-reaction that is growing stronger by the day.
Activists are working through the night in defeating the surveillance and monitoring to ensure free speech by developing new tools in a cat-and-mouse game. These are the heroes of our generation. By ensuring free speech and free press, they are ensuring unmonitored, unblockable communications. Therefore, they are also defeating the copyright monopoly at its core, perhaps merely as a by-product.
Free and open software is at the core of the counter-reaction to Big Brother. It is open to scrutiny, which makes it impossible to install secret kill switches and wiretapping in it, and it can spread like wildfire when necessary. Moreover, it renounces the copyright monopoly to the point where popular development methods are actively fighting the monopoly, again making the connection between copyright enforcement and repression. Free operating systems and communications software are at the heart of all our future freedom of speech, as well as for the freedom of speech for regime topplers today.
The software that is being built by these hero activists is a guarantee for our civil liberties. Software like Tor and FreeNet and I2P, like TextSecure and RedPhone. That criminals can evade wiretapping is a cheap price to pay for our rights: Tomorrow, we might be the ones who are considered criminals for subversion. These are tools used by the people revolting against
