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.

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’.

Dear Representative Velazquez

I am writing to you today to express my opposition to express my opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). 

I work for an Internet startup in New York that hosts original web video content. The company employs around 50 people; through our advertising programs we allow tens of thousands of independent creators to earn money from their work. The videos that we host include original drama, comedy, citizen journalism, documentaries and more.

We take copyright very seriously, and act swiftly in any reported or discovered case of infringement. We are both responsive and proactive in protecting the rights of copyright holders.

Existing laws, including the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, strike what I believe to be a good balance between protecting the rights of copyright owners and creating an environment in which innovative technology companies can emerge and grow. The ‘safe harbor’ provisions of the DMCA make it possible for Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and ourselves to do business, to innovate, and to create jobs, without the threat of liability or arbitrary disconnection. The DMCA is not perfect, but it sets out clearly the rights and responsibilities of each party. It protects both rights-holders and innovators.

SOPA is a different matter entirely. At a stroke, it offers almost arbitrary power to large corporations to censor or to shut down Internet sites. In recent years, there have been countless cases in which corporations have misapplied or even abused the mechanisms of the DMCA. Takedown requests have often been sent based on incorrect information or in violation of the principles of fair use. In some cases, individuals and companies have knowingly submitted illegal takedown requests that contained false declarations or that related to content that they did not own. In many cases, the provisions of the DMCA mitigated the damage done, but these cases make abundantly clear that any mechanisms put in place allegedly to ‘fight piracy’ can and will be abused.

Now imagine the harm that can be done by SOPA, which offers sweeping and unchecked new powers to those same entities that have already used the mechanisms of the DMCA carelessly, incorrectly and dishonestly. The victims of this misuse will be not only world leaders in technology like Google or Facebook, but - perhaps above all - smaller companies like ours that lack the resources to defend themselves against unfair or arbitrary use of the powers granted by SOPA. SOPA creates an environment that is actively hostile to any company involved in the business of media on the Internet. It is doubtful whether a ‘new Google’ or ‘the next YouTube’ could emerge under SOPA.

SOPA directly threatens my livelihood, but that is only one reason why I am opposed to it. As I have said, I believe that it is hostile to innovation. I also believe that it is unnecessary, ripe for misuse, and riddled with unintended and extremely dangerous consequences. You can read about some of those at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s page at What’s on the Blacklist.

Above all, I believe that SOPA is contrary to what we believe in as Americans. SOPA creates a system of censorship. It hands control of that system to powerful corporate interests. It includes no effective provisions to prevent abuse of that system. For any one of those reasons, it should be instantly repugnant to anyone who believes in freedom of speech, one of the core principles of our democracy.

I urge you to oppose this dangerous and unnecessary legislation by every means available to you. Please vote against it and work to educate your colleagues about the harm that this legislation will do. Thank you.