Rainblog

Yesterday, I wrote a post in which I suggested that we shouldn’t shed too many tears for Megaupload, and that the subsequent DDoS served no one - except the RIAA, the MPAA, and government agencies anxious to find an excuse to extend their interference in the Internet. I believe that the DDoS actually hurts the fight against SOPA and PIPA and empowers the special interests pushing for censorship.

While we’re on the subject, go read Umberto Eco’s “Striking at the Heart of the State”, which you can find in his essay collection “Travels in Hyperreality”. The gist, briefly summarized, is that terrorism - under which heading we can include retaliatory DDoS attacks - actually serves the cause of the autocratic states or multinational corporations it claims to fight. The damage inflicted by terrorist attacks is trivial in the grand scheme of things, but attacks allow ‘the authorities’ to introduce ever more draconian schemes of control and surveillance in the name of ‘fighting terrorism’. The true enemy of autocracy is democracy, not violent direct action.

That said, the Megaupload takedown serves as an illustration of everything that’s wrong with bills such as SOPA and PIPA. As well as pirates, Megaupload also served legitimate users, who have now lost access to their files - one of the inevitable side-effects predicted by opponents of the bills. Meanwhile, there are claims that you can still access Megaupload if you know the right IP address to use. Again, one of the objections raised was that the measures proposed would be easy to bypass, and that pirates - who are highly-motivated and technically-savvy - would be the first to do so. Looks like the anti-SOPA folks were right about that too.

The takedown also illustrates that the industry doesn’t even need SOPA: they’d like it, sure, but they shuttered Megaupload without too much difficulty. The record companies’ fight with Megaupload also featured a record company making fraudulent claims of ownership in order to censor something they didn’t like (the anti-SOPA movement called that one too), US government agencies acting as agents of the music/movie industry, and foreign governments doing the bidding of the US. In short, pretty much everything that opponents of this type of bought-and-paid-for legislation warned you about has turned out to be correct, and you can find it all illustrated by the Megaupload case.

I still don’t think that DDoS was a good idea, though.

Today Apple released its new iBooks Author software, a free authoring tool to allow writers to create books for iOS devices such as the iPad. Sounds nice, but there’s a little catch hidden (and I do mean hidden) in the EULA. Books - in Apple’s new proprietary format - created using the tool may only be sold through Apple’s iBookstore.

I don’t like proprietary formats and lock-ins. I resist buying books from Amazon because their engineered lock-in forces you to read the books in Amazon’s Kindle software, which isn’t as good as some other e-readers (such as Stanza, which Amazon bought to kill). Given my choice, I’d rather buy books in the open and widely-supported ePub format. I’d like to see everyone follow the lead of O’Reilly, who offer their titles in 4 or 5 formats, unprotected by DRM, and trust in the honesty of their buyers.

I’d hoped that we might move in that direction, and that before long I’d be able to buy books from the vendor of my choice in the format of my choice and read them with the reader of my choice.

Apple, it seems, may have other ideas.  

Yesterday, many Internet sites participated in a one-day blackout in protest against the Protect-IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The protests, combined with a letter-writing and phone-call campaign, apparently convinced several senators that there was real opposition to the poorly-conceived legislation. The bills, which had seemed unstoppable, suddenly look less of a certainty. It was almost as if the senators had realized for the first time that people who use or work on the Internet represent a real political constituency, made up of voters who are informed, articulate and organized, and who would have to be taken seriously.

Today, the Department of Justice shut down the Megaupload file locker and arrested several of its operators. In response, attackers allegedly from the Internet group Anonymous unleashed a wave of DDoS attacks, targeting the DoJ, the US Copyright Office, the MPAA, the RIAA and the websites of several major record labels.

Let’s think about the impact of that for a moment. While the website takedowns are probably annoying for the record companies and the industry associations, the attacks aren’t exactly a death-blow. On the other hand, in propaganda terms it’s a gift that the Big Content companies couldn’t have bought at any price. “Look,” they’ll say “this is what we’ve been telling you all along. These people are anti-social, extremists, terrorists. They commit criminal acts in defense of other criminals! This is why we need laws like PIPA and SOPA.”

I don’t believe that Megaupload is an entirely innocent victim. Pretty much any time I’ve seen a link to megaupload.com, there’s been pirated content at the end of it. I’ve seen a few exceptions - the service certainly has some legitimate users, who will be hurt by the takedown. Megaupload also removed at least some of illegal content on their site in response to complaints, but they did so knowing that there would always be more uploaded tomorrow and that the complaints would take time to come in. And I think they were fine with that, because their business model was based on getting people to upload and download stuff, and it wasn’t the legitimate content that drove the real traffic. This takedown may be just the latest round in an ongoing grudge match where the Big Money is playing as dirty as it knows how, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that the charges against Megaupload are without any substance.

“But the big corporations are wicked and greedy!” say the everything-should-be-free Torrent kiddies. No doubt, although whether that justifies you stealing from them for your own benefit is another question. At least Robin Hood gave to the poor, he didn’t just upload whatever he took to his iTunes library. More to the point, it isn’t just the big corporations who the pirates rob. My partner is a writer: all her work is now listed on ‘free ebook’ sites that host lists of links to electronic copies of her books on file lockers like Megaupload. Other writers, artists and software developers I know have had similar experiences. They aren’t Universal Records; they aren’t even Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling. They are people who work hard for very little money, and the pirates then come along and give their work away for free. That’s not exactly what I call sticking it to the Man.

Let me propose a simple rule. If you give away your work for free on the Internet, you’re a hero. If you give away someone else’s work for free on the Internet, you’re scum.

And if you build a business model on the back of other people’s work being given away, then you’re probably Megaupload, or one of a bunch of similar sites.

And if you rally to the ‘cause’ of something like Megaupload by participating in a DDoS attack that hands those big corporations you claim to hate a gigantic propaganda victory just at the point that they’ve suffered the first serious setback in their ongoing campaign to screw us all, about the nicest thing I can find to call you is ‘a dupe’.

An interesting article about the Cato Institute’s analysis of the MPAA’s voodoo economics made me think about the kind of factors that might lead me to pirate music. This train of thought was actually sparked by a misreading of a rather clumsily-worded sentence in the report which relates to a different issue, but it set me thinking about piracy and my own stance on the question.

Let me quickly say, before the jack-booted lawyers of the RIAA start subpoena’ing my ISP, I do not pirate music. I’m rather absurdly scrupulous about it, to the point where when friends say “Oh, don’t bother buying that, I have the CD, I can make you a copy”, I end up mumbling something about ‘supporting the artists’ and buying whatever it is anyway. I do that even though I know that the actual artist will see at most one-billionth of a cent from the trade, and the rest of the purchase price will go on filling the CEO’s swimming pool with Fuji water and paying senators to break the entire fucking Internet for us. Seriously, there are times when the antics of the RIAA and the MPAA make pirating music and movies look like the ethical choice. There’s a beast that could use some starving.

Be that as it may, I’m old-fashioned. I pay for what I get. I have a subscription at eMusic. I buy from Amazon. I’ve lately been indulging in a costly spending spree at the Android Market. Sure, I shop around for the best price, I take advantage of special offers, but I pay for what I download. Yay, me.

In the course of trying to fill my iPod with legally-purchased music, I’ve discovered that there are certain titles that just aren’t available. For instance, nobody seems to have a copy of Richard Thompson’s “Daring Adventures” as an MP3 download. “Happy Families” by Blancmange doesn’t exist on any music store I’ve seen. OMD’s “Architecture & Morality”, idem. As for the amazing “Waiting for a Miracle” by the Comsat Angels, an album that rocked my little teenage world as it had never been rocked before, good luck finding that. (Yes, I know I can get a CD copy for around $700 on eBay, and I know that it was even reissued - but Renascent Records’ store is broken and they won’t answer my emails. So there). And so on.

If I were so inclined, these would be the titles I’d pirate. They’re albums I loved and would really, really like to hear again. I could even try to justify myself by saying that I once purchased them on tape or vinyl - in fact, I still have them all, somewhere - so it wouldn’t really be stealing.

So what’s the problem? I can buy almost anything else by Richard Thompson or OMD, and all the Comsats’ later albums are available. Why not those particular titles? My best guess would be that it’s contractual. Some label or other owns the rights and is sitting on them, refusing to let the songs loose until it gets whatever it is that it wants. The lawyers have gotten involved, and there’s an end of it.

If someone ever asks me, “What would cause you to download music illegally?”, I have a ready answer for them: record companies.

Death of Kim Jong-il renews fears of 'Peak Tyranny'

The death of Kim Jong-il has led to renewed fears that the world may have reached Peak Tyranny, the point at which the maximum rate of global despotism has been reached. After that point, oppression enters a phase of terminal decline in which production of new abuses is unlikely to keep pace with the world’s demand. [Read More …]

In the early days of Twitter - I guess all Twitter’s days are fairly early, actually - I used to run a somewhat controversial but popular parody account. I thought it was funny and so did lots of other people, but not everyone agreed. From time to time, someone who apparently didn’t get the joke would fire off an angry tweet about it, usually full of profanity and crude epithets.

This bothered me a little at first, because I was trying to walk a fine line, aiming for gallows humor without being actually offensive. If my tweets were making people really angry, I wasn’t doing it right. So when I saw one of these furious tweets, threatening to kick my adopted persona’s virtual ass, I would look at the tweet stream of the poster, trying to work out why they were so riled up.

The thing that I discovered was that in pretty much every case, the people who sent these things were … how shall I put this … “not the sharpest knives in the drawer”. Few of them seemed to have anything substantive to say, and when they did, their grammar and spelling left a lot to be desired. For many of them, Twitter just seemed to be an extension of their SMS chats, so that their streams consisted of little more than a string of @-names followed by one-word messages such as ‘lol’. There was a lot of anger, a lot of braggadocio and crude sexual boasting. Those who had political opinions trotted out the kind of thuggish expressions of knee-jerk patriotism and prejudice that are about tribalism rather than reason. They were the kind of people, in short, who might pick a political side in much the same way that they would pick a sports team, and express their support for it in the same way.

Once I realized that the people who didn’t get the joke were mostly cretins, I stopped worrying about them.

Fast forward to today: the outspoken atheist writer Christopher Hitchens has died, and the hashtag #godisnotgreat (and its twin #godisgreat) is doing the rounds on Twitter. Needless to say, the existence of this tag has sparked a furious reaction, and the counter-attack is going full force.

There have been many great thinkers who were people of faith. Even today, religion has its share of brilliant minds. Like Hitchens, I don’t agree with their conclusions, but there’s no denying the sheer intellectual horsepower they can bring to the debate. However, I think it’s safe to say that most of them are not on Twitter. The counter-charge against the late Mr Hitchens is being led by people who are, once again, not the swiftest armadillos on the highway.

Reactions to the #godisnotgreat tag include a variety of logical (or illogical) modes. Predictably, the argumentum ad baculum features prominently:

Mr_ICENATION
#GodIsNotGreat whoevee made this ^^^^ DIE!!!!!
12/16/11 7:49 AM

DELOFROZE
#GodIsNotGreat…WHO EVA MADE THIS A TRENDIN TOPIC …ILL PERSONALLY KILL EM MYSELF….GOD IS THE BEST THANG EVA MANE…AMEN
12/16/11 1:34 AM

YuGottaLovette
@theReasonists lol you need help & to go to church .. GOD will punish you lol. #GODISGREAT ..
12/16/11 5:07 AM

as does the argumentum ad populum:

JazzeRadioChica
RT @RealWizKhallifa: #GodIsNotGreat… He’s more than great! RT if you agree!
12/16/11 7:54 AM

SamMight69Her
#GodIsNotGreat because he’s the GREATEST Retweet If You Agree
12/16/11 1:08 AM

(‘SamMight69Her’? Really?)

The argumentum ad hominem is also popular:

tatishurtado12
You must be a fucking dumbass if you think that #godisnotgreat
12/16/11 8:04 AM

consuelolarsen1
@raynevandunem #godisnotgreat is a sad tweet. Sad people think so when life isn’t working out for them. #smh
12/16/11 8:23 AM

and the ignoratio elenchi also gets some airplay, as in:

MyLife_hisTory
Christopher Hitchens wrote a book called #GodIsNotGreat. now tell me you Christopher Hitchens fans, WHERE IS HE??? OH YEA 6 FEET UNDER!!
12/16/11 7:56 AM

Many of the arguments offered appear to be simple assertions offered without evidence (possibly classifiable as petitio principii):

MissesEricaKane
What kind of tt is #godisnotgreat… are you kidding? He is beyond greatness
12/16/11 8:05 AM

KushNdOJNigga
#godisnotgreat , he’s the greatest
12/16/11 8:15 AM

based_goddess23
who ever started this #GodIsNotGreat TT is an idiot. With out God you wouldn’t be here
12/16/11 8:20 AM

iserve_JESUS
#GodIsGreat JUST because he is….
12/16/11 7:59 AM

The following example is difficult to classify, but it could be seen as a kind of implicit ad hominem, tacked onto the end of a simple assertion.

kelo3adi
#GodIsGreat and anyone that doesn’t think so can stick their heads where the sun don’t shine
12/16/11 4:26 AM

Explicit examples of argumentum ad verecundiam are oddly rare:

AlexSagot
God is a rock, fortress, my strength. Life is found in Him, and can not be lived away from Him. #GodIsGreat Psalm 18:2
12/16/11 7:14 AM

although arguments that appeal to faith can be seen as an instance of this type:

claire_bear_98
“God is not great” the people who hashtagged this have not experienced my God!! #Godisgreat
12/16/11 8:03 AM

Some commenters don’t make any argument at all:

leslienewton3
@KandisSofyaNGGV Do yall see that trending topic #GodIsNotGreat dat shit just made me mad
12/16/11 8:08 AM

while others demonstrate that their beliefs are part of a complete package:

FratfricnMericn
I find out #Godisnotgreat is a trending topic? What the FUCK. This isn’t fucking Iraq or Russia or some shit, this is America!! #Godisgreat
12/16/11 4:59 AM

For this commenter, two unsupported axioms are joined by implication, which might be formally correct, but is not likely to convince anyone who questions either of the two axioms.

KenChris_
I’m smart cause #GodIsGreat
12/16/11 4:47 AM

Interestingly, God’s most important role in the lives of many believers appears to be that of ‘alarm clock’:

TBlount10
Thank you lord for waking me up this morning. #GodisGreat
12/16/11 7:00 AM

Acshawtie
#blessme dear lord,#GodIsGreat #thankful everyday he wakes me up.
12/16/11 7:23 AM

Artina_Nadroj
You woke up this morning, you should agree that #GodIsGreat
12/16/11 7:37 AM

Finally, one believer provides an example of a hitherto unknown logical form that can only be described as an argumentum ad what is this I don’t even:

BryceFregia
Hey atheist that are saying #GodIsNotGreat try watching a leg grow out and even, then try telling me that. Cause #GodIsAmazing
12/16/11 7:53 AM

There’s really not a great deal that anyone can say to that.

io9 has published scans of Ray Bradbury’s answers to questions about symbolism in his work. It’s nice to see that Bradbury took the time to give a courteous and thoughtful response to the questions, and his final summary is especially on-the-money.

Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story … humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels, etc., etc. Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing … and as unobtrusive.

I couldn’t agree more.

Photographs from the November 17th Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York.

More photographs and text …