Once again I'm being bombarded with propaganda about the evils of proposed US congress legislation about protecting copyright infringement on the internet. Once again its being promoted as some kind of good versus evil, freedom versus repression argument. And once again I think its a travesty.
The notion that its OK to steal from artists, film makers, musicians and photographers and that people can go on downloading stuff illegally for free, makes me very angry. This is after all my living. The notion that this legislation somehow gives governments the power to stifle free speech is crazy. Isn't anyone aware that governments, including the US and UK have enormous power anyway. Should they wish to do so they can arrest anyone on suspicion of anything and lock them away for a very long time without any recourse to assistance. That somehow slipped through without any problem. I didn't vote for that, but many did.
Somehow media companies like film companies, record companies, publishers etc, are the bad guys and equally huge companies like Google and Facebook, who actually spy on you and track what you are doing on the internet, are the good guys. What on earth is going on? These "freedom fighters of the internet" are nothing of the sort, and are equally as determined to part you from your money as are the likes of Rupert Murdoch.
Personally I wouldn't be the slightest bit concerned if Google and Facebook disappeared tomorrow, and no I wouldn't care if this blog disappeared. What would happen is something would appear in its place immediately, and if that something had some kind of ethical belief that creativity by the artistic community is something to be treasured and rewarded, instead of ripped off, then so much the better.
Torrent sites are an abomination, they steal income from creative people, and does anyone really think that they give a damn about freedom of speech. And who do you think sends you all that spam?
Its not my country, but rather than just accept that one lot of corporate greedy b******s are better than another lot of corporate greedy b******s, why not actually work towards getting some decent legislation that protects artistic and intellectual copyright and gets rid of the crooks and the criminals, without giving governments the power to shut us all up.
Finally we did actually manage to survive without Facebook, Twitter and Google. The US seemed to be able to have a revolution without mobile phones and twitter and the notion of continuing to let the internet giants quietly go about their business of learning absolutely everything about us, and what we do every minute of the day, strikes me as more "Big Brother" than anything this legislation proposes.
