CounterPoint: RIP The Internet & F*** Your Free Speech

Editor's Note: Last week Jason James posted "This Is My Rifle: The Death of Free Speech - Pt. 1 SOPA", an attack on internet censorship and the proposed SOPA legistlation. RefinedHype Nation citizen EddieFTW asked me to write a rebuttal, and since I'd like to believe this is actually a place for intelligent debate (and, also, booty) I was only too happy to post.

Let's get right to it:

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A rebuttal to the excellent TIMR SOPA article, modified from a twitter rant I went on a few weeks ago. It started when I tweeted the following:

"I hate bandwagon activism more than anything in the world. Yall were just talking about ass not even 12 hours ago." To which a friend asked me the hilariously thought provoking "Why can't people TALK about eating ass and want a liberated Internet?" My problem with that question really goes into several directions, but I would like to preface by saying it that I am not Pro-SOPA/PIPA, but I find many problems with the Anti-SOPA/PIPA camp. Simply put, personalities and motivations matter. I see people who want to engage in discussions, as a reaction to the powers that be/the man/the 1%. And if you choose this reactionary route, then I am sorry to be the one to tell you that your activism will die. Quickly.

Narrow bands of ideology are almost impossible to sustain, because they require intense energy to sustain. Look at it this way: Which do you think has a longer sustainability rate, the 1st wave of punk rock, or rock and roll music in general? John Cage's prepared piano, or piano music? A blog dedicated exclusively to based freestyles, or a blog dedicated to hip hop in general? The regular readers of RH will be happy to know that RH is not transitioning to a based freestyle website. This is to say that the anti-SOPA/PIPA movement which we saw will not morph into a largest 'Protect the Internet' movement, even when that is the declared intentions of the protesters.

SOPA/PIPA was built on the earlier passed PRO-IP/ProtectIP bills. When they were used as a basis to seize ONSMASH and other websites, the Internet went into an uproar over the blatant abuse of power by the DoJ and others. The movement against SOPA rightly proclaims that Internet will be under even more fire if the bill(s) had passed. But let's stop and reflect back on the situation at hand. Was ONSMASH the backbone of the Internet, and a key piece of infrastructure, in the same way ICANN is? No. Was it even a backbone of the hip hop online community? No of course not! They don't have exclusive access to Rick Ross videos, or Joe Budden cryathons. And yet there is still a certain subset of people who would never be caught listening to Invincible who want to scream 'Fuck the police, free OnSmash.' At the very same time, there is a group of people (I call them Americans) who have never heard of Lawrence Lessig. These same folks don't have the depth and understanding to articulate a balance between a global Internet versus free enterprise versus the promotion of art versus international law versus Western Idealism versus reality versus private interests' influence on the democratic system, as well as the inherent tensions between a true democracy and a representative republic political structure. This is the problem with activism. How can people who have never studied copyright law, or international law, or even tried to sell a CD for 5 dollars, speak on the effects of SOPA on the Internet? Plato said that music is a moral law, and I agree with him. But morality is not enough.

Saying 'This law is good, this law is bad' isn't enough. When OnSmash got raided, people were mad. People were mad when they were fighting SOPA/PIPA. In my personal opinion, you're fighting the wrong battle if you are mad. People should be saddened by these events. I tracked the proposal, introduction and ratification of ACTA for literally years before the SOPA/PIPA fight in the US emerged. It required buying into a new fad called jogging 'reading'.

This is the upside of living in a relatively free democratic Western society. We can get online and see which bills our government(s) are introducing. If more people were paying attention when ACTA was introduced, maybe more people would have fought it. Or SOPA. Or ProtectIP. But it's not just those bills. There are literally hundreds of bills introduced every year which are passed, and retroactively people claim that they go against our ideals. Do you see the problem here? It is depressing that nobody paid attention to the introduction of the bills, but it is even more depressing that the relatively uninformed populist movement is the best hope for stopping those bills (for now).

George Orwell wrote, "Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." (1984, Book 1, Chapter 7) As a result, the anti-SOPA movement reached critical mass when websites like Wikipedia and Google threw some of their resources into the fight. But Google has made billions off the current IP system. Trillions have been made by private companies (who have more rights than actual human beings because of the Citizens United ruling) as a result of the current copyright system. In other words, we are fighting a privatized, controlled future on a SOPA foundation when the current system is already reprehensible and stacked in the favor of record labels who would pay an artist 10 cents on a dollar and claim that the fans of the artists are the ones hurting his/her pockets. We are lying to ourselves, so we can feel good about defending a system that hates us.

From that perspective, the government doesnt need SOPA/PIPA because the citizery doenst even pay attention to the world around them. To quote the 36 Strategies: "Moving about in the darkness and shadows, occupying isolated places, or hiding behind screens will only attract suspicious attention. To lower an enemy's guard you must act in the open hiding your true intentions under the guise of common every day activities." (36 Strategies; Strategy 1.)

This is exactly what we are seeing now. A political system that is not interested or willing to react to the needs of the majority of their population, with no recourse as a result. They can openly introduce bills like the 2012 NDAA and hardly anyone blinks an eye. Congress can EASILY introduce SOPA/PIPA once again in a few years and pass it quietly. Or they can just implement the bill without authorization. This is my larger point about American culture. Activism has ZERO effect if anti-intellectualism, greed, incompetence, apathy and naitivity is already killing the country.

Even the people who want to change the system don't understand the system, what they are fighting for, or against. The majority of the country has more interest in Occupying The Bar, than fighting the people bankers and lawyers who really Occupy Wall Street. Instead we are fighting to preserve an online system which gives more weight to Kim Kardashian sextapes/scam marriages/tv shows than to her Anti-SOPA tweets. Other than mocking her of course. There is too much power and money to be gained by breaking the current Internet model for it to remain in it's current state. The current defenders of the Open Internet dont really seem to understand the deeper ramifications beyond 'leave Megaupload alone!'. Cynicism is not a political party, and watching The Daily Show to make fun of Hermain Cain is not political activism. Hamid Karzai is also laughing at Herman Cain, but it takes courage and reflection to stop and realize that our entire political culture is being laughed at by a country which has a literacy rate of 28.1% I hope I'm not the only embarrassed by this. As Neil Postman explains, Aldous Huxley feared that what we love will destroy us.

If you want to come to the table and have a grown up discussion, you have to do the grown up thing and do research and find facts and understand the issues being brought to the table. Otherwise, shut up when grown folks are talking.The uninformed might bring popular attention and focus to the issue quickly, but does this change the plans of the government or their motivations? Let's ask Troy Davis how internet bandwagon activism changed his life. But most people dont want to hear this. They choose not to care about anything beyond their own selfish, short term demands. They would rather tweet 2chainz ad libs or engage in Nas versus Jay Z debates. I engage in those behaviors too, I will freely admit this. But at the end of the day, nobody wants to hear me talk about copyright laws and the impact of technology on society, they want to watch me slander @iRespectFemaels. Pun intended.

The biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves, and the powers that be see just how uninformed, ignorant and disorganized the opposition is. Wall Street is laughing at us. All the way to the bank. Literally. As long as the majority of the population can go to work and use Facebook for 5 hours without being fired or 'censored', the change we want to see wont come. Jason James mentioned how China's control of Internet access has no effect on the country's ability to violate copyrights. Those technologies didn't arrive by spontaneous generation. It wasn't a group of illegal Mexican immigrants who setup those systems in Bahrain, or Egypt, or Iran. Anyone who listens to NPR will tell you that worldwide censorship is led by the West. Reblogging a photo from 'V for Vandetta' that says 'People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people' is not enough. Watching The Matrix isn't enough. Occupying Wall Street isn't enough. Stopping SOPA isnt enough. Changing who we are, and our position to the world around us, might be enough. But until then, my position is 'f*** your free speech!'

-Eddie Martinez
@eddieftw
Senior VP, Itunes Records

See Also: This Is My Rifle: The Death of Free Speech - Pt. 1 SOPA