We users urgently need a global organization to counterbalance the powerful copyright industry.
This story is another case of 'here we go again'.
The copyright industry has to get 10/10 for tenaciousness and ability to lobby successfully. So ingrained that righteousness is on its side and that it must not be challenged on any aspect of copyright law, that it's clear PC and Internet users need to take another approach when attempting copyright reform on the Internet (negotiating with zealots is wasteful of time and effort). The combined efforts of thousands in the past 24 hours shows that another way is possible.
Where users still have some leverage is through their sheer numbers and at the ballot box. As we've just seen with the web blackouts over the US SOPA/PIPA legislation, that vast numbers of complaints seriously worry elected representatives. Whilst this effort has been both wonderful and influential, it's still far from being successful in the long term, given that we're up against one of the most formidable and experienced of opponents ever--the copyright industry.
The copyright and patent industries have amassed huge forces since the Berne Convention of 126 years ago. Not only do they have the immense power and force of this longstanding international treaty behind them but also they've amassed a huge army of 'police' to fight for them, organizations such as the WTO (World Trade Organization) and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) are at their every command. Together with newer treaties that are currently in formation such as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), changing copyright laws or stopping new ones from being implemented will require a huge undertaking.
In another post on El Reg earlier today (http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1288964) I suggested we should capitalize on the effective Internet blackout of the past 24 hours. It's shown everyone, especially elected representatives, what a mass movement can achieve when it's united. However, one swallow doesn't make a summer, nor are smallish individual organizations such as the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) ever going to be fully effective lobbyists as the resources, power and authority of the likes of WIPO et al dwarf them. However, what we've witnessed for the very first time within the past 24 or so hours is what the collective power of ordinary users and like-minded organizations are potentially capable of achieving. And we must capitalize on this while there's still momentum.
Clearly what's needed is an overarching international organization that's capable of tackling head on the copyright and patent industries and their henchmen, WIPO etc. The aims of such an organization would be to reform draconian copyright law and to make certain that it's fair for BOTH users and authors/creators, especially on the Web. It would also ensure that all internet users, whether they're individuals, corporations that use the Web, ISPs or Web hosts, are not continually subjected to jackboot tactics or held to ransom over issues such as piracy etc., either by governments or powerful vested interests such as the copyright industry. What this organization would NOT be about is legalizing piracy or endeavouring to do away with copyright altogether--rather one of the primary aims would be to reform copyright laws and treaties to the point where piracy would become a trivial matter.
Some may say I'm just an idealistic daydreamer. Perhaps so, but there's one thing certain in this information and Internet age and that's whoever controls access to information also controls the power. The stakes are huge and there's much at stake: whether the Internet remains a users' commons or becomes a corporate/government garrison almost certainly depends on how determined we Internet users are and how ferociously we fight the coming war.
Since the late 1970s, early '80s, laissez-faire economic theories--those from the Austrian School of economists (Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises etc.)--have become popular and supplanted neoclassical/Keynesian economics that sat more easily with Millenarian utilitarianism where 'the greatest good for the greatest number' was a primary axiom. Leaving aside the rights or wrongs of this economic approach, it, irrespective, has meant that it's been much easier to corporatize (lock up inside corporations) all sorts of information, and in fact this has happened on a grand scale over the past 30 or so years. Similarly, governments have been complicit: once where information was publicly and freely available it is no longer so. Now regularly one pays for once-free information, or has to force one's access to it through FOI, or it's unavailable through being 'commercial in confidence', and so on.
The outcome has been that information has often become 'lost' to the public, or once where there would have been no issue, copyright 'fair use' provisions are now challenged by rights holders to the point where ordinary users feel intimidated to the extent where they no longer use extracts; or where governments have no compunction about extending unfair copyright law such as indefinitely locking away 'orphaned works', or extending copyright duration for such long time frames that copyright is effectively in perpetuity--or for such a long a time that it becomes worthless (the concept that much information is perishable is important).
Copyright holders have had immense legislative success over past centuries with governments having granted these privileged elites almost everything they've ever requested. Clearly, past attempts at reforming copyright law by normal means have not worked and such attempts should be regarded as a hopeless waste of time. Rights holders perceive any attempt to change 'THEIR' copyright laws as a blaspheming heresy and they protect them with a religious zeal rarely seen elsewhere, therefore to make changes to existing laws almost guarantees the need for an entirely new approach--and we've seen it in operation over the past few days.
The stunning grassroots reaction to the proposed draconian SOPA and PIPA legislation provides us ordinary Internet users with an almost certain way to success but it'll only be effective if all of us unite with sufficient solidarity to see the copyright war through to a successful conclusion.
Make no mistake, the coming war will be a fight for power, the winners being those who will eventually control access to information and ideas.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
