NSA Surveillance, File Sharing, and Privacy
It's time for me to write something a little political for a change, but still technological. It's a lot of topics, so let's take this step by step.
We all know about the NSA, and what they've been doing to violate our privacy. On February 11th, Cosine Gaming will be rising up against that, with the Day we Fight Back. The Day we Fight Back is a movement organizing people to fight back against this surveillance. I recommend you participate yourself. I'm not going to say too much about the morals of this surveillance, since it's all been said before.
Onward to something that's been around for a while, but is definitely related. File Sharing, known by some as Media Piracy, and the legislation surrounding that, has been a big debate for a long time for many people. In fact, I'm currently participating in a debate about it. So this might be a little bit of practice for that. Anyway, I'm first going to start with the things that have already been gone over countless times by other people, but I want to restate it. Why does twelve percent of the population think it would be reasonable to put people in jail for downloading illegal copies of a file? I'm going to say it's mostly propaganda. We treat file sharing in this country like killing dolphins. We teach our kids it's always bad (even though there are a number of licenses in which it's encouraged) and that it is terrible. And now 12 percent of people want to put these "pirates" in jail. Let's talk about the economics of file sharing. File sharing not only can be considered to not affect sales, but it can also boost sales for small releases. So whoever is saying it's detracting from the economy significantly should do some more research. It definitely doesn't do it enough to be worth spending money finding people and restricting their Internet, which by the way 28 percent of people support. Now let's talk about some of the laws in place that are terrible to freedom and strong culture. If you haven't heard of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), it was a law passed in 1998 that criminalizes circumventing DRM and heightens penalties on copyright infringement on the Internet. Not only does it do that, but it also has other side effects. It is enormously chilling, meaning it prevents people from doing otherwise legal things for fear of being arrested. In fact, a man named Niels Ferguson has found vulnerabilities in a number of DRM methods, but has not published them because of the DMCA. Now let's get into some more original things I've been thinking about. Beware, these are a little more general. When I say that I support communism, everyone looks at me in shock. No, I don't mean Chinese Communism or any other communism really that exists in the world, because those aren't truly Marxist Communist. In fact, China is about as far away as you can be: it's capitalist. Why does it say it's communist? It's not. I support the abolition of private property, which is how Carl Marx sums up the entire idea of communism. People tell me that's too difficult to do in real life. Well, that's an argument for another day. But on the Internet, we actually have to add restrictions in order to have private property. You might argue that the natural nature of physical objects is to be privately owned, since they cannot be shared at once. But in the digital era, files are easily copied, that's what we primarily do with them. So in its natural state, the Internet is perfectly free. It's not until DRM steps in and tries to make files private property that they are no longer public. Most people I talk to who say they don't support communism say that sure it's a good idea, but it doesn't work. Well, on the Internet it does work. So why do we feel the need to restrict it? If DRM is removed, digital poverty cannot exist. We all own everything. Every contribution one person makes into the digital realm of the Internet that is the index of the human race's knowledge and power, is instantly accessible to everyone. Isn't that a utopia? Massive wealth for everybody can be a reality.
The same ideas can be applied to privacy, but it needs to be a little changed. When information is released, it only makes sense that everyone should be able to see it and know it, for the better of the human race. But also all humans have the basic right to privacy. So there needs to be a clear line between information someone might want to keep private and information that is beneficial to the human race. Unfortunately there's a lot of overlap there. So then classifying it is impossible is it not? Well, I propose this simple system. If it's directly harmful to the finder of the information if released it to the public, that is, not by lack of good, but by direct harm, it may be kept private. Otherwise, it is mandatory that information be shared with the public. We grow up as a race. We're constantly reminded of the importance of teamwork in schools. But once we see the world as it is, it's all competition and selfishness. There is no team. I propose we start a team. Let's call it the human race.