The internet is a relatively new conception, being invented in the mid-20th century, some of us remember before it was developed (and most of us remember it not being a part of our lives). Like most inventions, it has been used by both the ‘Establishment’ or ‘The Powers That Be’ and by ordinary people. The internet and computers in general have both empowered people to take control of their own lives and created a whole new level of surveillance and ‘The Big Brother State’.
Ever since the personal computer has been in mainstream use and since Microsoft bought the DOS operating system, Microsoft has had an iron grip on the computer market. Their vision was that everyone would have a personal computer and they would be the ones to let them use it (for their price and under their control), while IBM envisioned great servers around the world that would be controlled by individuals’ terminals, they would not need Microsoft’s software and so hardware was where the money was. As we know, Microsoft were correct in their analysis and the idea that people could have their own computer that they thought they could control was popular. But some people didn’t like that they had to pay £100 just to use their computer and that if they wanted to do useful tasks such as write letters or store information for an organisation or group they would have to pay yet more. Microsoft have made it harder and harder for anyone to use software other than their own and increased the price accordingly.
Some have turned away from Microsoft’s model of “every extra thing you want to do costs extra” and turned to Apple who will give you most things that you need but you have to buy everything from them. Others have created a community where people make software for themselves. The idea is that if ordinary people all around the world make our own software, it can be as good and even better than its commercial counterpart. This software does not have its code encrypted like Microsoft’s and Apple’s but is open for all to see, this is the world of open source software.
For many years this movement has been small and its products have been pale in comparison to their mainstream version. For years after most people were using a mouse to control their computer through a graphical user interface, these people were still typing out commands. But over that last decade their numbers have grown and their progress accelerated, most open source operating systems now use advanced graphical user interfaces and have more and more advanced programs to match. Linux is the most common type of software within this world and its browser ‘Firefox’ has become quite famous for its ‘Port’ to Microsoft Windows and is accepted by most to be better than Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer, even on its native Windows. This is just an example of the powerful software that is produced by the open source movement and now that the UN has chosen ‘Ubuntu’ (a Linux operating system) for its under $100 computer, to distribute in underdeveloped countries. A lot, if not most, of the movements resources are now focused on Ubuntu’s code.
Compatibility has long been an issue as with all non Microsoft software and OpenOffice has had problems creating Microsoft Office documents due to Microsoft office’s closed source nature (Microsoft obviously made no effort to read any file other than their own). The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) worked with Sun Microsystems to create a standard format for word processing documents and came up with the Open Document Format, which was then accepted as the standard word processing and office suite file format by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Microsoft refused to accept the new standardisation and Microsoft Office was still not even able to open, never mind create OpenDocument Format files. They were inundated with complaints by angry customers who were not able to use any of the standard files they were receiving and so Microsoft relented and Microsoft Office is now able to read and write OpenDocuments from Microsoft Office 2007 (from service pack 2).
People within this moment have mainly been technical in nature and have mostly let companies hold the copyrights to the names of their software, due to there being no individual creator to hold such rights. OpenOffice’s copyright was held by Sun Microsystems but when Sun were purchased by Oracle, a company with a history of commercialising and tampering with open source software, without permission from the community. The leading creators of OpenOffice became worried that the same would happen to OpenOffice so they created the document foundation to hold the copyright of OpenOffice and any other open source software that wishes to use it. Anyone can join the document foundation who agrees with its values and can take part in its democracy (based on a meritocratic, skill based division of labour). After which the developers continued to improve the software although they no longer had rights to the OpenOffice name, then owned by Oracle. The name LibreOffice was chosen for the continuation of the project until such time that the copyright of the OpenOffice name be reacquired. Oracle decided to keep offering OpenOffice and have even posted updates, but have since donated the name to Apache.
It will be interesting to see how many other software projects go down the same route and hold their copyrights in the document foundation or form similar structures. If projects continue to allow commercial entities to own and sway their products, they will likely be pushed and assimilated into commercial software such as Windows and the war will be lost.
Freedom of information goes further than just source code in this war, Wikipedia has become the largest encyclopaedia in the world and is created by specialists and knowledgeable people all around the world. Its accuracy is doubted by many due to the lack of credentials needed to modify or create an article. However Wikipedia and its users routinely remove false, unreferenced material and lock pages that have been continuously changed to the most accountable, previous state. Pages go through a hierarchy or locked states, where only the most certified users can request a change. While vandalism and incorrect posts do occur, it is a very good source of information where cross-referenced properly, as with any other source. Wikipedia recently undertook a ‘Blackout’ on the English portion of its site in protest to bills going through the US Congress. It was not designed to block users from information as they were shown how to bypass the blackout but meant that users read about the bills that implicated any site, with a link rout to illegal copyright material, as liable. Google also showed its support for the campaign by censoring its logo on Google.com.
With Google web search using a version of the Linux kernel, the engine behind Linux operating systems, and Android phones using another version of the Linux kernel, the future looks bright for open source software. It is now very possible to move away from Microsoft’s empire. Ubuntu has a very nice interface and integrates social networking far better than Windows; while those who are less techno savvy might like Linux Mint which is simpler than Ubuntu or Windows. Office files can be created by the powerful LibreOffice and free programs like Gimp can be used instead of Photoshop. Maybe one day, if this revolution is won, taxation will pay for the effort that people put into these projects, but until then, they rely upon donations based on the ability to pay and give time, from its users. The Future is ours, if we just choose to take it.
Political activism has been in the news more in the last year than in all the years since the 2003 Iraq war. Revolutions in the Arab world, occupations in America and beyond, and student protests and social unrest in the UK have all been hailed as ’social networking revolutions’. To understand the importance of information and communication technologies to these examples of political activism, we must examine the extent to which these events were actively driven by new technologies. By discussing these cases, we can see that increased use of social networking software and other technological advances is not necessarily a root cause of these events, but rather simply an aspect of them.
There can be no denying that, in the West, if your political event is not advertised on the internet, it is probably not going to be considered much of a success in 2011. In terms of promoting activism through the internet, a small number of websites have basically cornered the market, most prominently Facebook and Twitter. Almost every political event, from protests to organising meetings, to even attempted riots, now comes with a promotional Facebook event. Twitter updates followers in real time of what is happening in volatile situations, and provides a new media platform to activists as it becomes journalists’ first stop for ready-made quotes. Twitter has even spawned its own new form of activism, sometimes called the ‘Twittermob‘, where users can come out of seemingly nowhere to force action from previously near untouchable institutions such as the courts or powerful newspaper outlets. This has been seen prominently in the News of the World hacking controversy, the anger at offensive newspaper articles such as Jan Moir’s homophobic Stephen Gately treasure or the Sunday Express’ insensitive Dunblane article, and the Trafigura oil spill/Ryan Giggs being a mad shagger super-injunction cases.
It is important however not to overstate the importance of websites such as Twitter in recent political events. Reading newspapers and watching television news, it would seem like Twitter is incredibly important to modern day political activism, or indeed pretty much any mundane news story about anything ever. However, we shouldn’t mistake media portrayals of social networking software for reality. The traditional media frequently hype social networking in their reports, but in part this is because they are convenient to access, easy to understand, and important for news output in a world where traditional media is fighting to maintain its relevance and readership. Twitter provides user-generated content for traditional media to exploit while simultaneously cutting the number of paid journalists on their staff, and in this sense it can feed a capitalist agenda.
Facebook can be a great place to get on your political soapbox. It gives you a chance to vent, you can share great articles and you can find yourself in a genuinely interesting discussion about certain issues. As someone relatively new to socialism and who is still learning a lot about the issues surrounding it, I find my comrades’ political posts an insight and an education.
However, personally there are far too many daft cunts on my friends list for Facebook to be a consistently positive political experience. As someone yet to partake in a cull of my friends list, barely a day goes by where some prick I’ve never had even an iota of affection towards before posts something ridiculously out-of-order. Hence barely a day goes by where I don’t delete such disposables, from my life as well as my news feed.
So, with the inauguration of the new Facebook polls, the platform for dafties has predictably widened. In most cases it’s simply another annoying app that fills up your news feed, telling you boring information about people you don’t like. Although I must say my life has drastically improved upon discovering my cousin prefers Coke to Pepsi. Thanks for enlightening me, pal. Also, answering ‘Charlie Sheen’ PURE RANDOMLY to any question was hilarious the first time and it continues to be funny, you have such a sparkling wit! If you keep doing it it will only get funnier.
However, there are a lot of, let’s say, ‘moral’ questions springing up, ones I observe the results of with a keen eye. It might make cunt-culling a whole lot easier (if you’ve voted that you don’t support gay rights, for instance, it’s fair to say I want you to get tae fuck out my life), but venture further into the comment sections and it will really give you something to despair or fume about.
One particular question, the eternal toughie that is “‘Which hurts more, giving birth or being kicked in the balls?” has already been excellently assessed and the idiotic comments annihilated by Brogan, one of this blog’s own contributors, in her own blogpost .
Then there’s the simply bemusing poll that poses the question: “Do you support gay rights and weed legilisation?” The wording is what gets me. Although they are both, don’t get me wrong, prominent left issues, it’s a bit of an odd coupling – gay rights and drug laws are hardly two issues that go hand-in-hand with one another (unless I’m going to all the wrong parties). It’s a bit like asking “Do you agree with veganism and electoral reform?” or “Do you want a dessert or are you having a bath when you go home?”
In the interest of democracy, the poll offers the answers “yes (gay rights)”, “no (gay rights)”, “yes (weed legalisation)” and “no (weed legalisation)”. Here’s the catch: you can only vote once. I’m not sure how people are supposed to prioritise their decision-making here as the two aren’t exactly mutually exclusive. I’m certain that everyone in SSY is fully behind gay rights, and I’d vouch that most support some kind of progressive reform regarding cannabis law (whether that be legalisation or decriminalisation). I’m sure I speak for many of my comrades though when I say some human beings having the same rights as OTHER HUMAN BEINGS is a slightly more pressing issue than being able to buy weed legally. I can’t really imagine the thought process of those who think the opposite”; “Well, gay rights I can give or take, as long as I can buy an eighth and no get the jail!”
The comments section is dangerous territory. As you can imagine the discussion centres primarily on the gay rights issue. Those from the people who do support gay rights are truly quite heart-lifting, and are refreshingly well-reasoned and compassionate compared to the homophobic bile coming from those against gay rights.
Such gems as “you aren’t born gay, it’s a choice” make frequent appearances amongst the homophobic trolls. Oh aye, they choose to be gay, just like they choose to suffer all the torment they get about it from scumbags, and just like they choose to be put under scrutiny from cunts like you who, if I had my way, wouldn’t be allowed a say in the matter. It gives them a kick, so it does, to see you disregard their status as a FELLOW HUMAN BEING all because they fancy folk who’re the same sex as them (which, just so you know, they can’t help.) It is pleasing, however, to see that the good guys well outnumber the wanks for a change!
Perhaps the most provocative of the moral conundrums is the question: “Should soldiers get paid more than footballers?” Almost a million have voted yes whilst fewer than 50,000 have voted no. I’m sure many, like me, have refrained simply because they couldn’t give much of a fuck about the plight of soldiers or footballers. Not to mention the multitude of problems that any rational economist, socialist or pacifist could point out with such a proposal.
Quite simply, it’s economically unfeasible. Whether you like it or not, footballers are paid for through private companies (aka by rich bastards) and soldiers are paid for through taxes (aka by poor bastards). If soldiers were to receive even a quarter of a top footballer’s wage, paid for through the public purse, the so-called ‘grave recession’ we keep being told we’re in would probably actually occur, and nae cunt wants that.
As many participants in the poll have so earnestly pointed out, to solve this, all that’s needed is a rewording of the question. Many have appealed it should be posed as “Should footballers be paid a soldier’s wage?” which, fair enough, I could contend with. I fucking hate flashy footballer and their smug grins, parading around in their nice cars whilst the little folk struggle to provide for their families.
However, I wonder why I’ve just spent two paragraphs pointing out the menial errors with the question when, quite simply, I just fucking hate the British army a lot more. That is, not individual soldiers, of which I’m sure some are perfectly nice people and might just be trying to make ends meet and are only doing the work our government makes them, but British soldiers as a collective. As a collective, British soldiers are violent and unpleasant weapons of the state, prepared to brutalise and oppress innocent civilians and to imperialise entire nations in the name of oil. I want no hand in supporting their efforts in any modern conflicts but unfortunately I am required to do so financially through state taxes (or I will be, once I become an eligible taxpayer). And no, I don’t think anyone deserves a wage for being capable of murder and torture of innocent people, let alone a footballer’s sky-high salary.
Again, it’s a seemingly harmless question, presumably intended to provoke reaction from those with a ‘moral conscience’, that is, those who think the British army are brave freedom-fighters, and that they stop the UK from being ruled under Sharia law. That is, those who believe the work our armed forces do is noble, courageous and heroic, and somehow deserving of a millionaire’s salary. That is, essentially, the Daily Mail’s target audience.
It’s not really even people voting that soldiers should be paid millions that irks me – to loads of folk it’s a perfectly harmless enough idea – but the comments which have spawned from the question. Many have gotten up on their pedestal to deliver impassioned passages about why those who don’t think soldiers should receive a footballer’s wage are evil and morally corrupt. The results are, quite frankly, hilarious:
“If I had time I would track all the cunts who said no down” – what’s this, a fan of the army supports oppressive murder! Who’d have thunk it?
“Footballers don’t die protecting our country!!” – no, neither do they die waging illegal wars on government bidding, one reality check please.
“Whoever votes no is really harsh” – this one lacks any serious conviction, bless him.
“Whoever votes no should be crucified” – lol, retro!
“Footballers don’t benefit humanity” – yeah, humanity really benefits from our armed forces. Our military presence in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan has done wonders for humanity!
“Footballers are just gay anyway” – excellent counter-argument, I bet this one supports Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and all.
“But soldiers save lives!” – um what? I’m sure all those Iraqi and Afghan families grieving over their murdered children or parents would contest to that.
“Soldiers put their lives on the line for us” – um, if I may, I’d rather British soldiers didn’t do anything on my behalf.
“Those who said no… you’re heartless!” – yeah, those of us who give enough of a fuck about the lives of innocent civilians are heartless, nice one.
“32,794 people think sports is more important than peacekeeping.” – hahaha! Peacekeeping, the army; hahahahaha!
I’m going to stop there before my rib cracks. Have a look for yourself though, it’s a right laugh how clueless some folk are.
All in all, what I’m trying to say in this never-ending tangent is that these polls just give dafties extra opportunities to broadcast their pish, and they have more than enough outlets to do so already. I for one have blocked the polls from appearing in my news feed, and I anxiously anticipate the day they are done away with! Don’t even get me started on the evil cunts who call the outsider slice in a loaf of bread an ‘ender’..
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the Food Standards Agency with having a “public dialogue” about genetically modified foods.
Last week Dr Helen Wallace, who is part of the think tank Gene Watch UK, resigned from the steering group for the project, and Professor Brian Wynne, who was the group’s Vice Chair, resigned yesterday.
Professor Wynne is an expert on public engagement with science, and said the dialogue programme, which was set up by the previous government, was in fact little more than propaganda for the companies responsible for developing GM food. He added that the Food Standards Agency, which is supposed to act as an independent watchdog that protects the public, had a “dogmatically entrenched” position in favour of GM.
Dr Wallace has similar concerns, arguing:
“It has now become clear to me that the process that the FSA has in mind is nothing more than a PR exercise on behalf of the GM industry. In my view, this would be a significant waste of £500,000 of taxpayers’ money. A process that was barely credible has become a farce.
“Taxpayers’ money should not be wasted on a PR exercise for the GM industry.”
Campaign groups have argued that the whole exercise, which is going to be outsourced to another organisation, will in fact just be used to gather information to allow better marketing and political propaganda efforts as part of an effort to make the public accept GM food.
The last government set up the project to explore the public’s views on the possible wider use of the technology. In the late 1990s GM foods were introduced throughout Britain, including in Scotland, with virtually no public consultation. This led to many massive campaigns, of which the SSP played a key part in several. Now, although GM crops are still grown in the UK, many supermarkets promise not to stock them because of the pressure.
GM protester pulls out crops
Socialists have argued for years that the drive to introduce the technology was coming from massive private companies with an interest in making more money from food, and agricultural products like pesticides and fertilisers. Chemical companies like Monsanto have worked hard to genetically alter organisms so that they will be able to cope with poisons intended for pests being sprayed on them. However, there are concerns that once new genes are introduced into the natural environment they have been shown to spread to other organisms and crops, with unforseen consequences for environmental and human health.
But perhaps most worryingly, these new technologies are not being developed by innocent scientists just interested in advancing knowledge. They are being designed and developed by for-profit corporations, whose sole interest is in making more money. So once a company has altered the genes of an organism, it can claim that this living thing is now their work, and patent it. This means that whenever someone uses that crop or animal in farming, they will have to pay the company for the privilege. In fact, many farmers have been forced to pay who weren’t growing genetically modified crops, after company scientists discovered that what was predicted had happened: their genetic modifications had cross pollinated, and you could find altered genes in non GM crops. Instead of seeing this as a concern, companies like Monsanto see it as a way to make more money, by making these unfortunate farmers pay.
The ultimate consequence of this would be the privatisation of our food supply, so that a few huge corporations would be able to control the seeds and technology necessary for the world to feed itself, and we would have to pay them ransom to survive. One of the most terrifying examples of the way these companies think was the attempt to develop “Terminator” seeds (their name!), which would produce crops that would not themselves go on to produce any seeds. If the companies were ever able to get this product widely used, then farmers would be unable to collect seeds from the previous years’ crops for replanting, meaning they would be completely dependent on seeds bought from the company that owned the patent on Terminator crops.
The resignation of these two scientists follows on from the complete discrediting of the previous government’s relationship with science, after it reclassified cannabis as a Class B drug despite the advice of its own scientists not to, and then rushed through a ban on mephedrone with no concern for real scientific evidence. It remains to be seen whether the ConDems will have a better relationship with the scientific community, but given their support for the mephedrone ban we won’t hold our breath. The Food Standards Agency says it will ask the new government before going ahead with the GM food consultation.
Eating this can not be a good idea
The fact of the matter is, the idea that we need GM crops to end world hunger is a myth peddled by people looking to make money for themselves. The world is more than capable of producing enough food to feed the human race through sustainable, ecological and organic agriculture. The problem isn’t the food we produce so much as the way its distributed. When so much of the land on Earth is dedicated to producing crops and meat for the rich countries, it’s hardly surprising those who live elsewhere go hungry.
Shock result (not): in another depressingly familiar sellout, the ConDem government is not going to repeal the Digital Economy Act.
You might remember this epic law fail that was passed just before the election. It was New Labour’s dying gift to the corporate media/culture industry. It allows them to accuse people of infringing copyright, at which point whole households can face fines or even disconnection from the internet. This is purely on the say so of entertainment companies or other copyright holders, and most people won’t have the money to fight it in court. The Act was basically a case of Labour letting the entertainment industry write the law, in order to safeguard their own massive profits. This was then rushed through parliament with no time for proper scrutiny during the “wash up” phase before an election, where the parties push through things they all agree on.
Lib Dem lords originally supported the then Digital Economy Bill, which led to a grassroots rebellion within the party of the many members who are concerned about the future of a free internet. As a result of this, Lib Dem MPs withdrew their support when it was voted through, and Nick Clegg promised to repeal the Act if elected.
Well, guess what? The new Tory spokesman for broadband, Jeremy ‘Rhyming Slang’ Hunt, has announced the ConDem coalition will NOT be repealing the Digital Economy Act. Despite huge opposition from the public, and people promising civil disobedience against this ridiculous law, it will remain in effect.
Yet again the idea that the Lib Dems are in government to be a good influence on the Tories has been exposed for the lie it is. Clegg and co. trumpeted before the election how they thought it was disgraceful such a bad piece of legislation had been rushed through. But now in power they’re quite willing to go along with their new boss, former spin doctor for media company Carlton Communications, David Cameron. Yet another Lib Dem sellout from those so desperate for ministerial seats they’ll ditch any principle necessary: nuclear power, full proportional representation, stopping the renewal of Trident and now restrictions on the internet. What a shower of bastards.
Check out this site for info on the campaign to repeal the Act.
Portrait of Johan Schlüter, the Danish lawyer who said child pornography is "great" for the culture industry
Christian Engström, a Swedish MEP for the Pirate Party, reports how a Danish anti-piracy lawyer explained at an American Chambers of Commerce seminar in 2007 that the music and film industries were cynically exploiting the sexual abuse of children for political gain.
“Child pornography is great,” said Johan Schlüter, a lawyer for the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, at the event in Stockholm. ”It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites.”
“One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand,” added Schlüter.
This strategy has worked well for the culture industry, especially in Schlüter’s home of Denmark, where viewing of the torrent site The Pirate Bay is blocked. In Sweden, the police decided to also add the Pirate Bay to a list of sites blocked because it contained child pornography. They did not contact the Pirate Bay about this, and produced no evidence that the Pirate Bay in fact did contain such material. When the list of blocked sites was leaked there was an uproar, and the police were forced to admit that they had no evidence for the claim. As a result, the Pirate Bay is not blocked in Sweden.
At an EU level, the Swedish European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström last month introduced a directive to create a European wide censorwall, that would create a list of sites that would be blocked by ISPs across Europe. Although this is probably motivated by a genuine concern to end the distribution of illegal and abhorrent material online, there’s little doubt that it would soon be exploited by the powerful corporate lobbyists of the culture industry. What’s potentially even more worrying is the possibility that such a list could be used in times of crisis to muzzle political dissent.
The best known example of this is the “great firewall of China“, which is the huge list of sites that the Chinese government attempts to block its own people from being able to see, mainly to suppress opposition. Less well known is that Australia is implementing a similar list of banned sites which is kept secret from the public. However, a leak of the list revealed that, while it did contain many sites that showed abuse and horrific imagery, it also contained wikipedia entries, the website of a tour operator and that of a Queensland dentist.
While many of us could agree that we’re against censorship of the internet in principle, that of course leaves the real issue of the distribution of images of abuse online, something which everyone can agree must be stopped. However, the tragic irony of the way that corporate lobbyists are cynically exploiting this suffering for their own ends is that their proposals actually do little to stop real abuse.
As an experienced internet user will know, it’s really easy to get round a filter or block by using proxy servers. This is how folk outside the UK, who don’t pay a licence fee, watch stuff on iplayer for example. More than that, the web has been found to be one of the less important ways of distributing images of abuse. Paedophiles, aware that there are sophisticated police units tracking their activity, usually use much harder to trace peer 2 peer systems like bittorrent, or even just by emailing stuff to each other.
The best solutions to what to do about the problem have come from organisations of abuse survivors themselves. Mogis e.V. is a German organisation for abuse survivors who oppose internet censorship. They argue that not only will censorwalls damage the internet, they also are an abdication of the responsibility to actually deal with the problem. Their slogan is ‘Remove, don’t block! Act, don’t look away!’
They argue that just blocking sites is similar to people in the offline world who pretend abuse isn’t happening. The real problem is that children are being abused, and it is the duty of governments and police to track down and prosecute the people responsible. Instead of blocking sites, they argue that police should find sites that truly do contain images of abuse, which are internationally recognised as illegal, and actually remove them from the internet, rather than just blocking them. They should also find the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
What you see if you look at a blocked site in Australia
This is a far more sophisticated strategy for actually taking action to end real abuse. The reason it is not more popular among governments is that, controlled as they are by capitalist interests, many lawmakers who don’t really understand technology just take their advice from corporate lobbyists. And as these representatives of capitalism have proved themselves, their main interest is not actually preventing abuse, but using it as a Trojan horse to block sites that in fact have nothing to do with child abuse. If there were to be a regime of actually tracking these sites, proving which ones were distributing material that everyone agrees is abhorrent and illegal, and removing them from the internet, the culture industry would find it much harder to justify taking down sites like The Pirate Bay to governments and the public.
As you can see, MPs took their duty to turn up and discuss this important bill very seriously
Last week, the UK parliament showed its utter bankruptcy by passing the spectacularly bad Digital Economy Act into law with virtually no debate.
The law as regards the internet in the UK is now a total shambles, a pigs ear which has been written by the corporate culture industry to safeguard their own profits.
Noted knobhead and Subbuteo playerRichard Mollet is reportedly delighted. He is one of the leading corporate music industry lobbyists, and now a Labour election candidate, who helped get this dogs dinner passed.
For the rest of us however, it’s another illustration of how the UK parliament is completely undemocratic and has absolutely no interest in defending the rights of UK citizens when they conflict with corporate profits. A big campaign was mounted against the bill, with thousands contacting their MPs.
But, unfortunately, this strategy has failed. It’s time to start talking about how we defend innocent filesharers when the demands for payment start rolling in for companies who can claim copyright infringement. One of the worst things about this law is that it means that in many cases a company will just have to accuse someone of having infringed on their copyright, and, like with libel laws, most won’t have the money to defend themselves in court and will have to just pay a fine.
One of the ridiculous consequences of this is that people who HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN FILESHARING are getting accused. Check out this story about an Inverness couple who received a demand for payment for alleged filesharing, and who didn’t even understand what they were being accused of!
Of course, it’s hardly surprising that MPs don’t grasp these issues properly. Many contributions to the debate in parliament showed that they have an understanding of the internet about as good as your angry Dad when Windows breaks.
For example, Stephen Timms, who is Britain’s “Minister for the Digital Economy”, thinks that an Internet Protocol (IP) address actually stands for “Intellectual Property”! What more proof do we need that all this chat about the digital economy is nothing more than a cover for for more corporate profits?
Letter send by the Minister to other MP's
Although, credit where credit is due, even I have to respect defending this piece of capitalist legal vomit through a Star Wars metaphor:
The advocates of illegal downloading-for that is what it is-have succeeded in painting a picture that is very seductive, but very misleading. The best way to illustrate this is by means of an old-tech linear-medium metaphor. In this metaphorical world that they have constructed, my hon. Friend Mr. Watson, who is in his place but not paying attention, is Luke Skywalker. He is the little guy, the plucky loner fighting the machine. Clay Shirky is Obi Wan Kenobi, the wise, broad, almost mystical guru figure. Peter Mandelson is obviously Darth Vader. Rather more counter-intuitively, however-this is where the metaphor begins to fracture-the evil Sith Chancellor Palpatine, the most evil universally bad figure of all, turns out to be Steven Spielberg. That is who Luke Skywalker is fighting-the ultimate rights holder, the acme of creative content ownership. When Spielberg turns out to be the ultimate evil, we know that the metaphor-otherwise quite cleverly constructed by the freedom fighters-is not just flawed, but misleading, damaging and dangerous. When Spielberg is the ultimate evil, it turns out that creativity is the enemy. It is creativity that Luke and his pals are after.” Sion Simon, Labour MP for Erdington.
This transparent attempt to show the government is down wit da internets kidz will of course fail, once we start getting hit with pointless fines. Leftfield says: join us on the dark side, and get as much out of the net for free while we still can!
“On Thursday, our ‘Police’ visited the offices of the BPI, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties, and UK Music, and presented them with notice that the Digital Economy Bill is disconnected, from democracy, human rights, public opinion and sound business sense”
Time is running out before the UK parliament passes this law without debate! Write to your MP now demanding that the Digital Economy Bill is not passed without scrutiny in the dying days of this parliament!
Peter Mandelson salutes his paymasters, the record industry
As Leftfield has already reported, Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems have been united on at least one thing in the run up to the election: their desire to allow the corporate culture industry write the law when it comes to filesharing on the internet.
The bill is one of the more blatant examples of how corporations have a complete stranglehold over all the major political parties. Unfortunately for both the parties and their paymasters however, they had reckoned without the power of pissed off internet users.
BPI's director of public affairs, Labour candidate, and knobhead Richard Mollet
A wave of protest has crashed on to Westminster in recent weeks against the draconian bill. Last week over a thousand people protested outside Parliament, on top of the huge numbers of people getting in touch with their MPs. And members of the major parties themselves have been up in arms about the proposals. Lib Dems, to their credit, have had a grassroots rebellion against their own party leadership on the issue, after Lib Dem Lords (going against their own party’s policies) actually introduced amendments that made the bill WORSE.
As a result of the internal pressure, Lib Dem MPs have been forced to say they will withdraw all support for the bill being sent into the “wash-up”. The wash-up is the name given to the last few days of parliamentary business before an election, in which all the major parties co-operate to push through things they all agree on, away from the scrutiny of the media and the public. If the bill gets into this stage it will become law in the next couple of weeks without any kind of the usual debate and scrutiny given to new laws.
This week, an appeal was launched to raise funds for an anti-bill advertising campaign. The initial target was to raise £10,000, but this was beaten in a few hours and so it was upped to £20,000.
The pressure is being felt by Labour MPs as well, as one of them, Austin Mitchell, has changed his mind about his previous support. He’s tabled an early day motion which says:
“That this House believes that the Digital Economy Bill [Lords] is too important to be taken further in the last days of a dying Parliament; and considers that a bill with so many repercussions for consumers, civil liberties, freedom of information and access to the internet should be debated and properly scrutinised at length and in detail, with a full opportunity for public discussion and representation in a new Parliament after the general election and not rushed through in the few days that remain in this Parliament.”
Write to your MP now and demand that they support Early Day Motion 1223! The 24,000+ words in the digital economy bill deserve more than a couple of days putting it through on the nod. We people of the internet may well be on the verge of a massive victory against the corporate culture industry!
The first game I ever played was Sonic The Hedgehog. I played it when I was around about 5 or 6, and thank god the unrelenting, brutal and sadistic violence in that game did not scar me for life. I did everything to that hedgehog you can imagine. I jumped him into lava, into spikes, balls with spikes on them, cylinders with spikes on the sides, robots with cutting tools, lasers and one time I even threw him to his death from a plane.
I must have killed more foxes than the entire Tory Party in the past hundred years.
Of course, this wasn’t my only experience with videogame violence -- when I was 10 I played Desert Strike, where I had to commandeer a helicopter gunship to attack a series of targets inside an unnamed IRAQ IRAQ IRAQ middle eastern country. I carried out dozens upon dozens of bombing raids, ostensibly on military targets like anti-aircraft radar, presidential palaces, scuds and tanks. But more than once I would fuck up and gun down civilians I accidentally assumed were enemy infantry -- or blow up civilian houses whilst searching for more fuel. What happened? Well I would return to the frigate, my mission would be over -- but I would be allowed to restart ALL OVER AGAIN. An endless cycle of violence and misery.
This only got worse when I got the sequel Jungle Strike, and consciously decided to lay waste to Washington DC -- destroying Justice Department buildings, The Washington Memorial, The Jefferson Memorial and laying waste to the suburbs, in a gross dereliction of my mission objectives. Sure I would be asked to return to The White House to retry my mission, but this threat was frankly somewhat toothless considering it would be the first building I would destroy when starting my mission.
This videogame violence is almost cartoonish compared to what you are now able to do on modern computers -- buy sex from prostitutes and kill them, machine gun down civilians in a busy airport, or use a wii remote to enact a beheading. Veteran gardener Alan Titchmarsh is on the case though -- watch him below attacking violent videogames -- who have grossly surpassed such gritty, sadistic, and bloody 50’s dramas like The Lone Ranger.
If you look closely in the audience, you’ll be able to see pitchforks and torches at the ready.
Listening to Alan spell out the games names shows he is clearly very familiar with the industry. Sitting next to him is Mrs Helen Lovejoy and noted social commentator and cunt Kelvin McKenzie. More on him later. First things first, violent videogames may only make up 5% of the market as the pro-gaming guy says, but they make up 95% + of all decent videogames. You really can’t get as much joy out of pushing plastic buttons on a guitar in tune with shiny boxes as taking over control of a predator drone and using it to kill 20 invading Russian soldiers in a shopping malls carpark.
This isn’t because human beings or videogames players are psychotic, it’s just that violence is exciting. Violence involves pressure on individuals which heighten tension in all drama -- books, films and games. Things are more thrilling if there is a chance someone could die, especially if it involves their head being ripped off by the Predator. If you don’t agree try watching the 4 hour black and white silent version of Die Hard done by Werner Herzog. The drop in quality is noticeable. Yet one of our prize rent-a-panelist chumps says she is against “all forms of violence for entertainment”. Did you hear that? “all forms of violence for entertainment”. If these nutters had their way we would not have,
* 24
* Battlestar Galactica
* Die Hard
* Aliens
* The Bourne Ultimatum
* Predator
* Where Eagles Dare
* Indiana Jones
* Terminator 2
* James Bond
* THE ENTIRE STAR WARS AND LORD OF THE RINGS SERIES.
That’s only a very small example of what would happen to society if we ceased entertainment based on (kiddy on imaginary) violence. We would be stuck in an endless nightmare of shit daytime telly, which is probably why this rent-a-gob supports ending all violence in entertainment as it would mean Loose Women would endlessly loop on TV, alongside Jeremy Kyle and Call My Bluff and she would be on telly non stop.
Kelvin proudly displays his membership of the British Wankers Charitable Trust.
She also goes on to claim that videogames “promote hatred, violence and sexism”. If she had simply looked to her right however, she could have seen noted piece of human shit Kelvin Mackenzie, who has spent an entire journalistic career promoting all 3 far more effectively than the Metal Gear series. Videogames may have all these 3, but it’s no different from most mainstream Hollywood movies. GTA may allow you to buy sex from prostitutes and kill them, but theres a whole film industry dedicated to “torture porn” which often involves women being mutilated to death.
Yes! I killed a ship going out the exclusion zone, I've won a multiplayer map!
When Kelvin attacks videogames on the potential offence they may cause he should remember that no current or previous version of Street Fighter accused Liverpool fans of pissing on their own dead and robbing them. And that when you destroy something in a game and get a high score for it, people haven’t actually died for your moment of glory -- unlike the Belgrano.
Attacks on the game industry aren’t limited to daytime telly shows though -- violent videogames are denied tax breaks other games get, and other games have been attacked by MP’s -- such as Modern Warfare 2. Most of Modern Warfare plays as a conventional shoot em up, with the player gunning down terrorists, soldiers etc. But in one mission that provoked tabloid hysteria you play as a US Special Forces soldier undercover with terrorists attacking an airport.
Part of this mission means you have to keep your cover, which means not stopping the terrorists from slaughtering hundreds of civilians in an airport. Contrary to the press, you don’t have to shoot folk to keep your cover -- but you aren’t punished for helping the terrorists massacre folk.
It’s pretty realistic to watch, with lots of chaos and screaming going around you while it happens. But the reason the level is there is to show the extremes the character has to go through to keep his cover. You get the same kind of scenarios all the time in 24 -- where terrorists are allowed to carry out attacks ostensibly for the greater good.
The reality is that every now and then the press and politicians need to find some moral outrage to sell papers with, and create false panic - using tried and tested techniques. It’s not unlike the hysteria over “video nasties” in the 70’s, that were frequently banned because they supposedly corrupted people who watched them. This hysteria sometimes overlapped on to mainstream, big budget films -- like Childs Play, because the killers of Jamie Bulger were alleged to have watched the films.
It’s the same kind of madness Michael Moore did Bowling for Columbine about -- the idea that listening to some kind of music, watching a film, or playing a game believed to be obscene can force the user into violent acts in the real world. It’s not that dissimilar from the mephedrone hysteria -- that taking mephedrone automatically leads to death, while ignoring many of the victims were also taking methadone etc. So the fact Jon Venables and Robert Thompson had no moral compass when they were brought up, and abused by violent parents would have had no impact on their horrific crime, it was watching a horror movie that warped them. Or that it’s Marilyn Manson’s fault a school got shot up in a country with more guns than people.
It is probably only a matter of time before some violent attack is reported in the press, with the criminal having Manhunt, GTA or Modern Warfare in his videogame collection, and a demand to crack down on violent games is made.
That said, I don’t think you can be totally uncaring about a games content -- not all games should be whitewashed. There are games you can buy off the internet which simulate the rape of women. The fact that you can actually beat a prostitute to death in GTA probably does fuck up a whole load of young men’s attitudes to women who work in the sex industry. And that there are now videogames being planned based on the current war in Afghanistan does desensitise people to a war that’s causing misery for thousands of Afghans and hundreds of families in the UK. It’s no coincidence the US Army has released an official videogame as a recruitment tool, they are clearly trying to sell the idea to young guys that joining the army is just like a really realistic shoot em up.
But the facts are, all these attitudes are just as much in movies, music, politics and the press as they are in videogames. The reason games are attacked is because they are played by an overwhelmingly young section of the population, who don’t vote or own houses etc. This makes them the perfect whipping boy for MP’s who want to get votes and or publicity, and also newspapers who want to increase their circulation by generating some false moral outrage.
It makes me so sick, I just wish I could pull this kind of shit on them ALL DAY,
all to see, this is the world of open source software.
People within this moment have mainly been technical in nature and have mostly let companies hold the copyrights to the names of their software, due to there being no individual creator to hold such rights. OpenOffice’s copyright was held by Sun Microsystems but when Sun were purchased by Oracle, a company with a history of commercialising and tampering with open source software, without permission from the community. The leading creators of OpenOffice became worried that the same would happen to OpenOffice so they created the document foundation to hold the copyright of OpenOffice and any other open source software that wishes to use it. Anyone can join the document foundation who agrees with its values and can take part in its democracy (based on a meritocratic, skill based division of labour). After which the developers continued to improve the software although they no longer had rights to the OpenOffice name, then owned by Oracle. The name LibreOffice was chosen for the continuation of the project until such time that the copyright of the OpenOffice name be reacquired. Oracle decided to keep offering OpenOffice and have even posted updates, but have since donated the name to Apache.
Two scientists have now resigned from a group charged by the 
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