Rebecca MacKinnon is the author of “Consent Of The Networked – The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom” and this is her TED Talk which summarizes the vast panoply of issues surrounding, embedded within and erupting from the linking of the world via the internet. Even if you don’t read the book – watch this and share it.
First, here’s a news report on the growing worldwide outrage over the ACTA treaty which, if implemented, will censor the internet and destroy freedom of speech at the behest of a handful of corporations.
And then there’s a talk given by Prof. Michael Geist which lays out the fight – thus far – against legislation like SOPA, PIPA, TPP and ACTA and what needs to happen to continue defending human rights to communicate freely against corporate corruption of government bodies.
I’ll post links here for you to go to petition sites and info sites and all that crap – when, if you really do give a shit (and you should), all you have to do is Google ACTA or do a search on BoingBoing for ACTA – so you can add your voice to the growing clamour for governments to stop being ignorant rubber stamp toadys of their corporate circle-jerk partners.
When shit like this gets people out on the streets in the middle of winter you know they are fucking angry. And if the cumtwads in suits who fancy themselves the new aristocracy think they’re going to actually get away with this shit they will be SO surprized when the dissent on the streets reaches through the tubes of the interwebz and chokes the bejeezuz out of their scrawny little testicles.
Fuck them.
But also be aware – they will NEVER stop trying. Evar. So we have to constantly be in the mode of kicking those fuckweeds in the gonads – hopefully on a daily basis. It’ll be good exercise for our democratic muscles and probably eternally entertaining to listen to them whine and squeal as we put the boots to them. Yes – it’ll get tiring from time to time but in the end it will be worth it.
So – want to help keep the world free? Make every day “Kick A Corporate Weasel In The Nuts Day”.
This PBS documentary hosted by Bill Moyers was originally broadcast in 2006 – yet despite being 6 years old it is still painfully relevant to what is happening today with the war against the net being waged with increasing ferocity by governments and media corporations.
What does a bill like PIPA/SOPA mean to our shareable world? At the TED offices, Clay Shirky delivers a proper manifesto — a call to defend our freedom to create, discuss, link and share, rather than passively consume.
Whilst listening to the boys’ musical blandishments you might want to pay a visit to oatmeal.com and watch their amazing animated GIF which is the best SOPA protest EVAR.
And, by the way and in case you were wondering, Congressman Lamar Smith, the so-called corrupt hypocritical douchenozzle author of SOPA is guilty of copyright infringement and under his law his own website would be arbitrarily taken offline. What a fucking putz.
Have a great day, Interwebz!
Cheers.
P. S. If you’re still not sure what SOPA and PIPA and ACTA and all the other bullshit laws to fight online piracy are really about – and why it matters to you – please give a read to Dan Gillmor’s Guardian article which lays it out pretty plainly.
Legislation like Sopa, or its US Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (Pipa) – and a host of activities around the world – share a common goal. These “fixes” are designed to wrest control of these tools from the masses and recentralize what has promised to be the most open means of communication and collaboration ever invented.
It’s not about piracy – it’s about freedom of speech and the control of information. The folks who currently wield power don’t want you to be able to hear or say anything they can’t control and profit from.
Welcome to the future folks – be prepared to fight for it.
I’ve been busy over the holidays doing the usual things: wrestling with trees in the living room, eating too much, enduring overlapping fractured conversations in rooms full of simultaneously speaking family members and stuff like that.
During that time I’ve also been reorganizing my office/edit suite and lining up my production agenda for the coming year.
This will include all the upcoming efforts I’ll be applying to the Ruffus Project as a whole – including a slate of new episodes made exclusively for release on the web and a series of print-to-order books based on the original shows. That post will be put up here soon – I promise.
I’m also in the process of setting up a whole new blog site at robbomills.net which will – eventually – take over from this site. Millsworks will fade away and get archived somewhere but I’m not going to worry about that right now.
Both of those projects evolved from our creative incubation process with the Rhino Group – a semi-weekly gathering of our core colleagues at Parkdale’s Rhino Bar & Grill.
More ambitious plans lay in wait for some longer form projects and I’m looking forward to being able to reveal them as they get closer to reality.
On top of all that I’m also looking for some kind of job because none of these works are paying my salary – yet.
There’s a lot of commentary I want to offer up since we are entering the year where the War On The Internet truly erupts. The Occupy Movement which sprang from the Arab Spring is just the tip of the iceberg of the disruptive nature of social media and the new ability of citizens to bypass traditional corporate and state controlled media to receive and disseminate information and culture. The interwebz hold the distinct possibility to make fundamental changes in how not just our individual lives are lived but how we as human beings think, operate and interact with each other and the planet we share. That’s big stuff. And believe it or not, kids puppet shows – and other offerings from indie producers like myself – have a place in all that. We are at the cusp of “use it or lose it” with respect to the Net – and also, believe me, of “defend it or die”.
That material will have a better home on the new RobboMills site.
There are many others playing in the same cultural media sandbox as yours truly. I’m privileged to know and work with quite a few remarkable people here in Toronto who are increasingly active in establishing what we do online as a serious industry. You’ll be hearing more about them too. They are awesome.
But – between now and then I have to get all the shit in the boxes on my office floor up on the shelves, all the spaghetti of wires under/over/across my standing desk organized into a reasonable facsimile of a non-combustible electrical array, all my outstanding contracts and other legal documents vetted and signed, and I think there’s also this little thing called back taxes.
Blah blah blah. There’s always going to be something to do.
Soooooooo – bear with me as I get my proverbial shit together and we’ll have a fun and entertaining ride in Robbo’s culture bucket from now to the end of 2012. What happens after that is between you and your local faux-Mayan bullshit distributor.
Predictions for the coming year? Everything is going to get very dark and scary and mean and bloody – and there will be puppets. Keep smiling, tell the ones you love that you love them, and speak out loud against lies, intolerance and hypocrisy. And eat more vegetables.
And now – here’s a video of a crow tubing on a rooftop.
Internet Rising is an utterly awesome documentary which describes itself as
a digi-documentary investigating the evolving relationships between the Internet and collective consciousness of humanity. It provokes many questions about ancient and modern paradoxes of life, its pleasures and pains… and the gray area contrasts in between – but most of all it is meant to be an inspiring conversation starter; a launchpad for future remixes of a collective search for some meaning/mindfulness. It is also spiced with a bit of humorous satire to give our *overloaded* BIG DATA _information_ dump() brains a little break from the daily race :)
Henry James Ferry of Grounded News reports from Liberty Park in New York City, comparing the growing protest movement and accompanying police response to previous Tea Party events. Concise and to the point, Ferry debunks the corporate media bulshit and points out the obvious differences between the actions of the far right and the popular revolt which is spreading across America.
Well done.
I’ve nattered on in these pages before about how Net Neutrality equals Free Speech and needs to be vigorously protected by an engaged and active citizenry. Watching the major news outlets ignore and then distort the events unfolding in New York serves as a very strong example of precisely what I was taking about.
Can you imagine what would happen if the only access to news we had was through the papers, radio and television networks?
Back in the 1960′s and early ’70′s there was still a modicum of journalistic integrity which allowed news unfavourable to the corporate classes to be broadcast and discussed freely. Reports on riots in the streets, mass arrests and use of the National Guard on campuses – as well as front line footage which brought an un-embedded view of the Vietnam war into the living rooms of America, and the rest of the world – played a decisive role in slowing the corporate takeover of U.S. democracy and ending the profitable and tragic debacle in Vietnam.
The lessons from those days was obviously learned by authorities within the police and news industries – just as it was within the music and other entertainment industries (you won’t find any anti-war songs on the Top 10 these days) – and more pervasive and monolithic controls of these information sources has been corporatized to craft a simple, bland and diverting flow of stories that pass for news and culture.
The net eludes that control and will continue to do so as long as it remains free and out of the controlling hands of corporate power and corrupt governments. Otherwise we’ll just be listening to more Justin Beiber tunes sung in reality show competitions while the few who choose to stand up against corruption and theft get the snot smacked out of them by police thugs with no one paying attention – or being able to pay attention – or being allowed to pay attention.
So – pay attention.
Thankfully we are at a cusp where the ability to control the net has not been entrenched and cannot be enforced – yet – and the lies or non-news being spewed by old media is readily being shown to the world as the truckload of rancid horseshit it actually is.
I don’t care who’s side you’re on or what your personal political perspectives are. What I do care about is the ability of everyone to engage in free and open debate. That will not be possible without a neutral net.
A follow up to my previous post on the eG8 – here’s the impromptu press conference held by those attendees (Lawrence Lessig, Susan Crawford, Jeff Jarvis at al) putting their spin on the Sarkozy government/business G8 slant on their proposed ownership and control of the interwebs.
Short strokes: “Yo, Nikki – the net is infinitely more than just a handy platform from whence you greedy geezers can continue to shill your lies and sell your shit. So go fuck yourself.”
Lessig is great – so’s Jarvis – but be sure to catch Jérémie Zimmermann around 18:15 where he really nails what is going on with all this eG8 bullshit.
I'm going to be slowly making some changes to the website both in format and content - and I'm pretty sure even the URL will change.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.
It's going to be more of a personal news aggregator with a featured video blog from yours truly. We'll see how long that lasts. So bear with me - thanks.