The Day After The SOPA Blackout

So eagle eyed readers will have noticed some sites had a "stop SOPA" campaign of some sorts, some (like mine) went black for the day to protest it. Most of the techie sites who protested are niche sites. They may be huge well known names within that niche, but the average Joe will never stumble across them. The big changer for the blackout was Wikipedia.

All of the major news networks have been able to simply ignore the protests about SOPA, their paymasters being SOPA supporters is a key part of that decision. At best we get the odd mention as a minor side story to another one. Wikipedia changed that. Wikipedia has a HUGE user base all around the world, from a LOT of different walks of life and interests. These are the people that tech sites just don't reach. Wikipedia can and did.

SOPA is one of many freight carriage bills being sent out by the recording and movie industry to ensure they don't have to adapt to the times, and to allow them to make illegal anything that forces them to. If SOPA dies, they will rename it to something else and start the whole process of deception and corruption again until it passes. When it passes it will confirm all of the oppositions claims to be accurate but by that time......hey, it's the law suckers.

The supporters of these bills have been convincing the only people who matter (the politicians) that it's not only necessary, but it's fair, balanced, and right. Plenty of the politicians supporting it know that's bullshit but they have some reward for backing it so they will. Some will genuinely believe the bullshit the recording industry and movie industry lobbyists have fed them. The Wikipedia effect meant that the staffers and politicians themselves got a bit of a wake up call on a few things:

• The true nature of these bills
• The public know the true nature of these bills
• The public are pissed off at the deception and misinformation used to try and push them through
• The public can and will mobilise against those who have sold them out

They now have to start figuring out some new factors into their equations. Do they continue to buy the bullshit sold to them by industry lobbyists and support bills clearly about censorship? How will this affect their reputation and re-election chances? Can they truly say they didn't get the message yesterday? Politicians are cold calculating self serving bastards. Anything that affects their position or influence is something they devote some thinking time to with advisers.

By defending censorship, they are saying either "I ignored the voters who complained yesterday and will carry on as before" or "I heard the voters protests, delved into all the evidence and dismissed all of the experts in favour of the lobbyists and will carry on as before". 

The most disappointing part of yesterdays events for me was having my faith in Channel 4 News destroyed. Usually Channel 4 are very rigorous on checking facts, verifying claims and nailing interviewees when they make false claims. So it stunned me to find that Jon interviewed Marietje Schaake in what I can only be describe as unbelievably biased. He starts with the statement from the MPAA who are bullshit artists even on the basics, then his entire interview is one fallacy after the next, with straw men arguments and smears that come straight from the MPAA handbook. Jon, I am appalled that you did this. I held you in VERY high esteem as one of the few proper journalists and a fantastic interviewer who makes a habit of being tough but fair.  

I am left asking "why did Channel 4 stoop to the levels of regular news reports on this issue?" It's not incompetence, news networks have a well oiled work-flows to take any breaking story and devle into the facts, claims and counter-claims. As I said, Channel 4 are usually spot on for getting the real story. They're not usually known for just stating "facts" that are not only unproven, but have been proven to be bogus with even the most basic of journalist skills.

Why didn't this happen here? Did they even look? If not, why not? If they did, they'd have seen the MPAA studies, figures and claims to be debunked many times over in many different places with detailed exposes and reasoning. It's not hard. All of that information is on a plate for journalists to check out.

The more serious possibility is that they KNEW it was bullshit, but it's in their interests to spin that line rather than do their job of bringing the actual news to people in as fair a way as possible. This is a story about toxic legislation being rammed through the legislative process by deception and misinformation......funded and pushed by traditional media companies who have no intention of adapting to what their customers want.

I find it hard to believe Channel 4 News is incompetent on this story. I've long held a lot of respect for them and their integrity. I also find it hard to believe that they intentionally took the propaganda line on this story, again because they've built up a history of accuracy. Clearly something went wrong on this story.

Watch the interview and judge for yourself. I'm not sure if their DRM or region restrictions may make the video unavailable but it's embedded anyway.

It did seem to be just one sign that the major news networks had expected the protest to be a damp squib, and preprepared their own "failed protest" pieces, backed by the "facts" as provided by organisations like the MPAA which have more in common with organised crime, than any legit "protecting creatives" cause. Some sites had to hastily rewrite posts after it turned out different to what they'd hoped.

Some have went into face saving mode, with distraction smear posts about Wikipedia, missing the point that the anti-SOPA sentiment is about ALL sites with user generated content, and the abilities of rights holders to abuse their powers in shutting down anything they don't like (ie that threatens their monopolies by offering their customers something they won't do). Wikipedia is one of MANY sites standing up for free speech on the internet. It happened to be one with the largest reach beyond just the techies.

Only because Wikipedia took a stand, did the news networks feel compelled to cover it at all. It'd look odd for a major world brand like Wikipedia to take a stand like this, and the tech journalists in the mainstream news to not cover something that everyday folks are seeing and talking about. It'd not just look odd, but suspicious. "Why don't they cover this? Do they agree with SOPA? Do they want to censor the internet too?"

One criticism I've seen about the various blackout scripts is that some of them allow the site to still work as usual if you disable javascript, so what's the point? That IS the point. The message is that anyone with the slightest technical know-how and the determination to get around a block, will do so. This means that the publicly stated goal of this legislation "to stop piracy" won't even work. People will find ways around it.

Everything has pros and cons. The SOPA supporters constantly try to shift the goalposts when quizzed on the cons of these bills like "no due process" "wrongful site take downs" and a whole lot more. They always exaggerate the pros "fighting piracy". The subtle javascript blackout functionality shows that all they have is cons, because the pros are ineffectual.

Do these people know the cons? Of course they do. These companies used to be gatekeepers, where the only people allowed to play had to come through them, paying whatever tolls they demanded under whatever conditions they set. The internet has evolved us as consumers to a state beyond them. They are no longer required. We now have the ability for fans and artists to reach each other directly, cutting out the middle men.

The SOPA supporters ARE the middle men. They see how the landscape has changed and it doesn't include them. The genie is already out of the bottle. All they can do is try to force it back in with legislation that ONLY benefits them. 

The politicians who support these causes are clueless about the modern world and the internet in particular. They exist in a world where information goes one way, that voters, customers etc are all just receivers, and what we receive is the official word that keeps the natural order of things, and the monopolies in place. Yet despite being clueless on how the internet works, even to a basic level, they feel perfectly qualified to decide the laws that govern what it can and can't do. They also feel it's responsible to ignore ALL of the evidence given by experts in favour of their puppet masters wishes.

We (the internet) made a powerful point yesterday. This is not over, do not assume victory if SOPA is shelved for now. like a wart, it will return under a new name with similar wording, pushed by the same names using the same bullshit arguments and "facts". We need to keep fighting these bills as and when they appear. That does not mean blackouts again necessarily, but does not rule them out.

Arguably one of the hardest hitting points made yesterday was that politicians who had been using the "protecting American jobs" mantra were being accused of censorship. The US and it's politicians are loud proclaimers of being "the land of the free" where the constitution protects things like free speech. They use "censorship" as a stick to beat other countries like China with. When bills being debated in the US for US law are being compared to those of China, and even look bad in comparison.....it's a mark of shame for those politicians putting their names in the "I support / vote for this" column of the history ledger.

I applaud everyone who took part in the SOPA protest yesterday in their own ways. Some spread the word, some changed avatars, logos etc, while others went black for a period of time. Keep up the fight to protect freedom of speech.