Power vs. People in the Digital Age

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The Daily Reckoning | Saturday, January 21, 2012 The battle for digital freedom begins... An important press release from the people at thepiratebay.org Plus, all of this past week’s reckonings, electronically conveyed for your free and leisurely perusal... --------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Million Blind Could Regain Sight In the 21st Century, a new dawn of medicine has emerged that could restore the sight of 10 million people worldwide. It’s a medical breakthrough that is unprecedented in human history. In fact, this amazing technology could eventually improve... and extend... every life of every person on earth. And one tiny California Company, priced under 80 cents per stock, is at the forefront of this revolutionary medical treatment. Click here to get the full details on this explosive penny stock that could significantly advance the field of regenerative medicine — and possibly make you ridiculously rich. Joel Bowman Checking in today from Punta del Este... Earlier this week, we brought you an immensely important message we found floating around regarding Internet censorship: ____ __ _ ____ everything ___ _____ is _____ ____ ____ fine ____ ___ _ ______ love _____ ______ ___ your _____ ____ government. As you can see, the text was corrupted...but we trust the message was clear. For the record, when it comes to government censorship, we’re all for it. By all means, censor the bastards...starting with those spineless little oxygen-thieves in Congress. We jest, of course. The fact that politician’s regularly and enthusiastically exercise their right to free speech may well be the biggest advantage their opposition enjoys. In other words, we wouldn’t be without their self-defeating pronouncements and double-talking idiocy. Not for a second. Here to share the latest on the unfolding “Battle Digi-tal,” we present a column by the inimitable Jeffrey Tucker. Please enjoy... The Daily Reckoning Presents Power vs. People in the Digital Age Jeffrey Tucker The government seems determined to turn out the lights on the digital age. And this is with or without SOPA or the other bills that were only this week shouted down by the global digital community on Blackout Wednesday. The very next day after support for that legislation collapsed after an impressive mass protest, the FBI and the Justice Department demonstrated that they don’t have to pay any attention to all this silly clamor. Congress, legislation, polling, debates, politicians, the will of the people — it’s all a sideshow to these people. The FBI and Justice Department on their own initiative shut down megaupload.com, the biggest of thousands of file-sharing sites online, and arrested four of its top officials. The FBI is hunting down three others who seem to be on the lam. They all face extradition and twenty years in prison. As part of the sweep, the feds issued 20 search warrants and arrived at individual houses in helicopters. They cut their way into houses, threatened with guns, confiscated $50 million in assets, and outright stole 18 domain names and many servers. And what is their grave crime? They are accused of abetting copyright infringement, that is, permitting the creating of copies of ideas expressed in media. No violence, no fraud, no force, no victims (but plenty of corporate moguls who claim without proof that their profits are lower as a result of file sharing). Megaupload had millions of happy users. It was the 71st most popular website in the world. Only 2% of its traffic came from search engines, which means that its customer base was loyal and collected through the hard work and entrepreneurship of site owners. For its users, it was a wholly legitimate service. For the owners, their profits were hard earned through advertising. But the government saw it differently. And contrary to what many people believe, the already-existing law permits the government to do pretty much whatever it wants, as this case shows. The government relied on a 2008 law to make criminal instead of civil charges. A newly created IP taskforce is the one that worked with the foreign governments to seal the deal. In the end, it was a presentation of exactly the nightmare scenario that anti-SOPA protesters said would happen if SOPA had passed. It turns out, as the deeper realms of the state already knew, that all of this was possible with no Congressional action at all. Congress doesn’t need to do anything. We can watch the debates, go to the polls, elect people to represent us, and perform all the rest of the rituals of the civic religion but none of it matters. Power is here, active, oppressive, in charge, permanent, regardless of what you might believe. Might it be that some of the users’ shared content on Megaupload was copyright protected? Absolutely. It is nearly impossible not to violate the law, as shown by SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith’s own campaign website, which used an unattributed background image in technical violation of the law. The leading opponent of piracy might himself be a pirate! But the trendline with Megaupload was clearly toward using the space to launch new artists with new content: not piracy but creativity. As Wired.uk wrote, this crackdown came shortly after Megaupload announced music producer Swizz Beatz — married to Alicia Keys — as their CEO. They had rallied a whole host of musicians including Will.i.am, P Diddy, Kanye West and Jamie Foxx to endorse the cloud locker service. Megaupload was building a legitimate system for artists to make money and fans to get content. What’s this all about? It is some powerful corporate lobbyists trying to prevent the emergence of an alternative system of art and music delivery, one powered by people rather than merely the well- connected. The Internet’s great glory is its seemingly magical capacity for distributing information of all sorts universally unto infinity. The idea of the state’s regulations on information — instituted by legislators in the 19th century — is that this trait is deeply dangerous and must be stopped. So it is inevitable that the powers that be will try to shut it down; copyright enforcement is only the most convenient Taser of choice. This is the battle for whether the digital age is permitted to exist in an atmosphere of free speech, free association, free enterprise, and real property rights, or whether it will be controlled by government in conjunction with aging media moguls from monopolistic corporate oligarchies. The lines are clearly drawn, and it is taking place in real time. Example: within minutes after the officials of Megaupload were arrested, a global hacker group called Anonymous shut down the Justice Department’s website and also the sites of the Motion Picture, the Recording Industry Association of America, Universal music, and BMI — the major lobbying forces in Washington for restriction and reaction against the Internet. In another stage of the great battle over information freedom, the Supreme Court, on the very day of the SOPA protests, handed down a decision that could have a devastating effect in the months and years ahead. It permitted the re-copyrighting of works that are already in the public domain so that the domestic law accords with the international law. If that sounds like no big deal, consider that many local orchestras have already changed their season lineup to remove some major works from their repertoire because they can no longer handle the licensing fees. It’s hard to know what to call this but cultural masochism. Regardless of how the legal struggles turn out, a culture of rational and irrational fear has gripped the web. I’ve noticed this growing over the last months, but just this week, it has become worse, to the point of paranoia and even mania. The successful protests against SOPA only ended up causing the censors to redouble their efforts, and the message is getting out: almost everything you want to do online could be illegal. A small sample of what I mean. Just this morning I received the following email: “BBC Four recently broadcast a stunningly beautiful documentary called God’s Composer (Tomas Luis da Victoria) hosted by Robert Russell Beale. A friend in Rome sent me a link to it, but I’m not sure I’m free to share it. Have you seen this documentary? It is stunning both visually and musically.” Not free to share a link? What? To be sure, I don’t know whether he intended to send me to the BBC or some other site that is hosting an additional copy of it. Regardless, this is what it has come down to: a belief that every email is traced, every site is monitored, every act of individual volition on the web could be a crime, every website is vulnerable to an overnight takedown, every domain owner could be subject to arrest and jail. The battle between power and freedom dates to the beginning of recorded history, and we are seeing it play out right before our eyes in the digital age. It’s as if at the beginning of the Bronze Age, the leading tribal chieftain made smelting ore illegal, or if at the transition from iron to steel, the ruling elite put a cap on the temperature of refining ovens, or if at the beginning of flight, some despot declared the whole enterprise to be too risky and economically damaging to the industry that depended on land travel. In the current version, the issue of “intellectual property” is at the forefront of this battle. The first most people heard of this was on Blackout Wednesday when Wikipedia went black. This is a foretaste of the future in a world in which power achieves victory after victory while the rest of the world cowers with fear in darkening times. Regards, Jeffrey Tucker for The Daily Reckoning Joel’s Note: As we watch the battle between freedom and censorship escalate, we find ourselves standing at an important crossroad in history. We salute the brave advocates of free speech who are targeted by the Feds daily for nothing more than sharing infinitely reproducible information and spreading invaluable ideas...the very basis for human evolution and understanding. We stand in unwavering solidarity with these champions of freedom. On the other hand, we’re excited by the thought that the state, led by the goons and spooks at the (In)Justice Department, has just picked a fight that will eventually destroy it. When the music industry went up against Napster, it won the court battle...but eventually lost the war. File sharing changed the entertainment industry forever...to the vast and unfolding benefit of consumers everywhere and the well-deserved punishment of entrenched, state- protected monopolies that tried to stop them. Freedom will prevail here, Fellow Reckoner. Don’t be scared to stand on the right side of history. On that note, please feel free to reproduce any issue of The Daily Reckoning — including this one — on any site you so wish. The messages contained herein, we hope, are bigger than any one of us. They are to be shared and spread for the learned consideration of all. Is this the miracle America has been waiting for? An unbelievable phenomenon is quietly sweeping the nation. The railroad age... the steel age... the electronics age... the technology age — this phenomenon triggered them all. Now it’s happening again! Watch this special, time-sensitive presentation now to find out how it could affect your job... your lifestyle... and your wallet. ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning... European Downgrades: Will There Really Be a Fallout? By Bill Bonner Melbourne, Australia On Friday, after the close of business in the stock market, S&P downgraded 9 European countries. Spain and Italy were both taken down another notch, leaving Italy with a BBB+ rating and Spain with an A. But the headline damage was done to France, whose triple-A rating got downgraded to AA+. France had been rated AAA for 36 years. China’s Cinderella Story By Chris Mayer Gaithersburg, Maryland Everyone knows that when the clock strikes midnight for Cinderella, the carriage turns back into a pumpkin, the horse into mice and the jeweled gown into rags. The spell is broken and reality returns. I keep thinking of China in this context. One of the big questions of the year is whether China blows up or not. Hard landing or soft? When will the clock strike midnight on the Chinese? Things are slowing down, and it feels like it’s getting late. Blackout Wednesday: The Time Has Come By Jeffrey Tucker Auburn, Alabama Wikipedia, that ever-evolving monument to human collaboration in the cause of global enlightenment, goes completely black today, Wednesday, Jan. 18. The blackout is a choice, and a brilliant one, made by founder Jimmy Wales in consultation with the whole Wikipedia community. It is a protest, a statement, a symbolic warning to the world of what can happen if governments attack the free flow of information. Getting out of Dodge An interview with Doug Casey (Conducted by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator) Louis: Doug, a lot of readers have been asking for guidance on how to know when it’s time to exit center stage and hunker down in some safe place. Few people want to hide from the world in a cabin in the woods while life goes on in the mainstream, but nobody wants to get caught once the gates clang shut on the police state the US is becoming. How do you know when it’s time to go? A real stress test: could any major bank or developed nation survive? By Bill Bonner Los Angles, California Last week, Spain and Italy were able to offload 22 billion euros worth of debt. This quieted investors’ fears. Newspapers reported that calm and confidence had returned to the markets. Lenders and borrowers breathed more easily. Bankers put their feet up. Apparently, no major bank in Europe was so far underwater that the European Central Bank couldn’t bring it to the surface. None had its lungs so full of bad debt that the ECB cannot breathe life into it. Only 62 People Know Exactly Why These Four Companies Could Change the World Now you’re #63 “on the inside” — and you’re on the verge of raking in lasting wealth. This could go down in history as the story of our era. Click here for all the details. The Weekly Endnote... Usually at this point in the weekend issue, we turn the floor over to our Fellow Reckoners for some letters to the editor musings. This week, however, we’d like instead to present an unedited, unapproved, blatantly copied press release issued by the good folk at piratebay.org We trust they’ll take no issue with our reprinting their important message. Please enjoy... INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture. Because of Edison’s patents for the motion pictures, it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North American east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them — like Fantasia, one of Disney’s biggest hits ever. So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other people’s creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations — it’s all based on being able to re-use other people’s creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide [by] their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other people’s rules. The reason they are always complaining about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle [men, who] in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them). It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition. We’ve proven that their existence in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are. And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations. The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe — but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a Swedish friend said this: The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the Internet into a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to the rest of us obedient consumers. The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that no one wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government [wants] the American people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination, but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown. SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia spring to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really. To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry says they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that create the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and TV shows that make them think that they’re fat. In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complaining that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world — because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News. Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that. THE PIRATE BAY, (K) 2012 --- As always, we welcome your thoughts. Email them to the address below and... ..enjoy your weekend. Cheers, Joel Bowman Managing Editor The Daily Reckoning ------------------------------------------------------- Here at The Daily Reckoning, we value your questions and comments. If you would like to send us a few thoughts of your own, please address them to your managing editor at joel@dailyreckoning.com A Real Stress Test: Could Any Major Bank or Developed Nation Survive? How a Deficit in Capitalism Helped Engender the Financial Crisis Higher Taxes to Appease the Zombies China to Show More Manufacturing Weakness? Embattled Washington: From SOPA to the Debt Ceiling Do Investors Pay Attention To Ratings Agencies? The Daily Reckoning: Now in its 11th year, The Daily Reckoning is the flagship e-letter of Baltimore-based financial research firm and publishing group Agora Financial, a subsidiary of Agora Inc. The Daily Reckoning provides over half a million subscribers with literary economic perspective, global market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Published daily in six countries and three languages, each issue delivers a feature-length article by a senior member of our team and a guest essay from one of many leading thinkers and nationally acclaimed columnists. Cast of Characters: Bill Bonner Founder Addison Wiggin Publisher Eric Fry Editorial Director Joel Bowman Managing Editor The Mogambo Guru Editor Rocky Vega Editor Additional articles and commentary from The Daily Reckoning on: Twitter Facebook DR iPhone APP To end your Daily Reckoning e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Daily Reckoning, cancel your free subscription. 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