Muttering in the Rabbit Hole – The Right to Print Arms?

Photo by XtremerX.

Rick Kelly, in this article on TechCrunch, takes techno-centric paranoia to the next level when he fires away at legislation nobody has yet proposed to regulate future possible applications of 3D printers. Strangely, Kelly cites some of the very serious potential hazards — like the ability to make a functioning firearm! — with this technology but proceeds to dismiss any such consequences as secondary to any anticipated attempt to consider even thinking about maybe just possibly regulating their use. Seriously? As full-grown adults, we’re meant to imagine a scenario in which a twelve-year-old can make himself an assault rifle or some crystal meth with a printer but think, “Nope. Any attempt to address that will necessarily infringe on our basic freedoms?”

Still pimping the victory over SOPA as a win for free speech, Kelly proposes, “Either we allow for the ambiguity that freedom and unregulated 3D printing will bring, or we enforce far-reaching laws that may decrease liberty without changing results.” This is one of the most consistent dichotomies fostered by those too distracted by shiny tech toys — that all laws pertaining to cyberspace and technology can only ever be both ideologically overreaching and functionally useless. Perhaps the best example of a law that could arguably fit this profile would be Prohibition — overreaching in principle and useless in practice — but even the 18th Amendment did not result in actual restriction of freedom so much as it fostered profitable and violent criminal enterprise.

In the broadest sense, Kelly merely describes the well-known price of living in a free society — that freedom means unpredictability. Nevertheless, we do find ways to balance this risk in order to avoid complete chaos. The expectation of privacy in virtual space does not apply to those who would use the technology to do harm in physical space. That courtesy is not extended to would-be terrorists, child pornographers, or human traffickers to name a few; and yet I see no restriction of my personal freedoms as a result. Moreover, Kelly and those who think as he does would do well to remember that when a government agency has reason to stick it’s nose in someone’s business, it will likely do so with the cooperation of Web technology companies and without passing any new laws. So, rather than focus on symbolic victories over imaginary tyrants, why don’t we have a grown-up conversation about what we might be willing to do about the real twelve-year-old printing the very real assault rifle?

Internet Freedom as Party Plank with Cormac Flynn (Podcast)

During the SOPA battle, I continually tried to argue that it was fine to distrust media conglomerates but that it was not rational to simultaneously turn a blind eye to the political influence of Silicon Valley. Last week, a handful of Democratic representatives sent a letter to the DNC requesting a new plank in the party platform.  The language was drafted or backed by three Northern California representatives — Zoe Lofgren (16th), Anna Eshoo (14th), and Doris Matsui (5th), and they were joined by Jared Polis of the Colorado 2nd.  The language requested reads as follows:  “Democrats should explicitly affirm our staunch commitment to online free expression, to protect privacy from overbroad surveillance, to a free and open Internet, and to innovation in digital services.”  There’s nothing inherently negative about this language. In fact, it’s so generic that it begs the real question:   Who or what is behind it?

To discuss the relevance of this latest development, I spoke with my colleague Cormac Flynn.  Cormac has been a democratic party operative for more than 25 years. He has served as a campaign manager or finance director at the state, local, and national levels; and he is today Vice President for State Policy and Program Planning at the League of Conservation Voters.

NOTE – 9/4/12:  This article from The Washington Post reports that the Democratic Platform will include language committed to an open Internet that includes protecting intellectual property and providing cyber security.

Find a Real Cause

                   

Let’s compare.  Both of these videos are technically marketing pieces. I would know as I’ve made a few hundred marketing videos in my career.  But what is each video selling, and how is each doing its job?

The video on the left is produced by Kim Dotcom and is selling one message:  Free Kim Dotcom.  The video on the right is produced by The What Took You So Long Foundation, and it is selling one message:  TEDx is a force for positive change in the world. Dotcom’s video has nearly one million views; the TEDx video, just over one thousand.  The former is an example of what I consider the most destructive and cynical manifestations of the digital age, while the latter represents what I perceive as the best in next-gen, progressive spirit connected and empowered by technology.

Dotcom’s video is more than a little creepy. It uses the desaturated hues we associate with post-apocalyptic movies, a fake TV-noise plug-in to give Dotcom himself a subversive, underground appeal; repeated images of angry mobs hiding behind Guy Fawkes masks to enhance the theater of revolution; and a catchy, electronica tune with lyrics that speak of humanism in contrast to the almost threatening, dystopian montage.

Dotcom may have the gall to compare himself to Martin Luther King, but the video is actually more reminiscent of a terrorist training film than a promo for social change, and that’s why it’s effective.  It takes a cynical, pseudo-revolutionary video to appeal to a cynical psychology — one that actually believes that streaming stolen creative media via torrent sites is somehow striking a blow for freedom and justice in the world.

By contrast, everything we see in the TEDx video is exactly the opposite in sensibility and intent.  First, we see faces, a lot of faces of real people who left their desktops and traveled to Doha to participate in something and engage in physical interaction. Not that the TED enterprise is without its flaws, but this video itself taps into what I would describe as a progressive deconstruction of institutions — a global “think different” consciousness that very likely will bypass traditional means to solve real problems like hunger, disease, and poverty.

When Eiso Vaandager says toward the end of the video that he “envisions the UN coming to TEDx organizers to solve a problem they can’t,” this is the kind of audacious claim worthy of our attention; and it only underscores just how offensive it is to hear Kim Schmitz use the same media to compare himself to civil rights leaders and other legitimate heroes.

I suspect the jaundiced supporters of the Dotcom video imagine themselves somehow allied with the proactive folks in the TEDx video because, of course, people have a tendency to believe in associative relationships among things that sound similar (both are bucking systems, aren’t they?); but there really is no comparison.  Dotcom’s video targets Americans — people who already enjoy freedom, and it aims to convince them that his incarceration would be their prison, too. The TEDx video targets a global community, and it aims to convince people that energy, willingness, and intelligence can solve real issues.

Of course the word freedom is a slippery little bugger. It gets used by everyone from peace activists to corporate fat cats to terrorists; and Dotcom is merely following in a long tradition of vested interests abusing the concept to defend personal gain and deflect attention away from the harm he does. As an artist and an American, I cherish the First Amendment above all other laws; and it is destructive both to creative works and to the First Amendment when a guy like Schmitz presumes to hide his theft of the former behind the humanistic benevolence of the latter.

If what you envision is legit social change, there are plenty of progressive and tangible ways to take action — everything from just supporting a crowd-funding campaign for a cause to lending actual knowledge, assistance, or muscle to a project of interest. But streaming free entertainment in order to fill the pockets of a guy who has produced exactly nothing in the world counts for less than zero on the social change meter.

There is actual oppression in the world, real sorrow, real evil worth your attention and action. Right now, thousands of human beings worldwide are being trafficked as sex or labor slaves; too much of the technology we take for granted is being produced by hands in poor working conditions; climate change is real; terrorism is real; hunger is real; there’s a revolution in Syria you might have heard about; the Iranian government is playing a dangerous and complex game; we have thousands of homeless and suicidal veterans here in the U.S.; Russia just sentenced musicians to prison for performing a protest song; oh, and the world economy is still pretty shaky.  If you’re looking for heroes and villains, they’re out there; but if Dotcom and Hollywood fit those definitions for you respectively, you’re more than a little naive.