One bourbon, one scotch, and one mav

So I just got through watching ‘The People vs. Larry Flynt.’ For whatever weird reason, I decided to just go buy it. It was a wonderful film and I’m definitely not sad that I bought it. Anyway, it started me thinking and now I can’t stop, so I’m writing, as per usual.

In the film, Larry hits a point where he’s just not willing to deal with the fact that he can’t print whatever he wants to print (basically.) He says that he has a 1st Amendment right to say whatever he feels like saying, period. He takes this to its most absurd extreme, but even though his tactics are most unorthodox, he’s absolutely right. The right to say what needs to be said is absolute, and if nothing else, is the first and most obvious reason that our country is noticeably different from many others.

The thing that really bugs is that none of these copyright assholes seems to figure this out, and I mean both sides. Very few people have figured out that this whole copyright issue is all about right to free speech. It’s just turned on its side; they don’t want to prohibit the speech itself, but rather limit the manner in which the speech is conducted.

You knew this was going to come back to this issue, didn’t you. Admit it.

Where am I going with this? Simple, I’m going to predict a few things, Kreskin style, and you and I can snuggle up here close to the fire and watch ‘em come true, one by one.

First, the extension of copyright, the prolifieration of copyright laws and publc service announcements from the MPAA are a propaganda game. They’re playing the same game that the War on Drugs people are playing, only they have fewer regulations that apply to them (since most of the people attempting to enforce these laws are private organizations, and their idea of enforcement is civil suits, not criminal prosecution.)

Second, this propaganda game has only one main objective: to make Joe America think that copyright is indeed valuable to him! I mean, what if Joe has a wonderful idea, but there’s no money to produce it because of all those horrible copyright thieves? Or better yet, what if Joe’s creation gets stolen and put on the horrible Internet! Then Joe is screwed, because he can’t make any money! Oh, woe is Joe, because as we all know (a) making money is the artist’s first priority, and (b) the movie studios and music industry are just falling apart now that a third of the country has access to broadband.

The propaganda game is important, because it’s the only thing that would logically convince people that all the content they consume, download, collaborate on or (most frighteningly) create needs to be protected by some sort of digital rights management. Because, after all, Joe, that poem you wrote to your girlfriend that started off “Roses are red, violets are blue” is horribly clever, and wouldn’t you just feel horribly foolish if Hallmark stole it and made a hundred thousand dollars selling copies of it on a fucking birthday card.

Comptuters are by nature inflexible. They do things in ones and zeroes; when you translate that in the real world, you end up with “You can either do it, or you can’t.” No debate, no negotiation. No matter whether we want to admit it or not, this is the cornerstone of our legal system. Did that guy steal a candy bar from the corner store? Yes. Why? Well, if he did it because he’s indigent and hasn’t eaten in three days, he’ll probably get a different sentence than if he did it just because he wanted to. “Society is based on bending the rules”, writes David Weinberger in his wonderful article “Copy Protection Is A Crime.” And that’s the truth folks. Information doesn’t want to be free, information is intangible. It doesn’t want, it doesn’t love, it just IS programs. People want information to be free, that’s why they release it. Or they don’t. Either way, just because Fred Durst can’t buy enough coke this week to keep his hookers from leaving him for another guy because 10,000,000 pimple-faced Internet dorks thougth his album sucked so they just trade it instead of buying it doesn’t mean that we should all give up or freedom to write without having to tithe to Bill Gates, the Federal Government or some information broker like Verisign.

Let me make myself perfectly clear: I don’t object to artists being paid for their endeavours, nor do I object to Joe American being able to control the flow of his own information. What I DO very, very strongly object to is that right now, the artist is being treated as a deity, as a one-in-a-million who’s being personally harmed every time one of their songs zips quietly across the shady world of the Internet. I’m not going to give up my right to write in unencrypted, uncontrollable ASCII just because Christina Aguilera’s album sales are down.

Okay, that’s enough. If you have two brain cells to bang together, go watch Larry Lessig’s 2002 OSCON presentation. And get off your hairy smelly ass and go fucking read about (and hopefully vote for) Howard Dean.