You may have heard people talking/blogging/twittering about SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act. The recent SOPA-related boycott of GoDaddy was all over the news, with many people expressing their outrage over the possibilities of SOPA, but when I ask people about SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act), many don’t really know what the bills propose, or what we stand to lose. If you are not freaked out by SOPA/PIPA, please: for the next four minutes, instead of checking Facebook statuses, seeing who mentioned you on Twitter, or watching the latest episode of Sherlock*, watch this video (by Fight for the Future).
Some thoughts:
In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.
Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.
The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.
The Australian and Swedish governments show themselves to be poodles of the American establishment, Australia by besmerching a citizen who hasn’t yet been charged with any related crime, and Sweden by resurrecting a once-dropped legal case surrounding unprotected consensual sex.
Wikileaks acted as a distributor of information they have been supplied with, and following true journalistic principles, have protected their source. If there is a crime, it has not been carried out by wikileaks. You can argue about whether they should be more discriminating about what they have released but that is not illegal.
The released cables have been created, stored and inadequately protected by the American government. The fault lies with them for allowing them to be accessed and released. Indeed it may yet prove to be an ‘inside job’.
The australian government’s behaviour so far in this shameful episode has been grubby and cowardly – sucking up to American popular opinion. Grow some balls, Australia, and defend a citizen who has done nothing but reveal the shabby truth about what is actually going on in global politics.
A massive cache of secret US military files released by Wikileaks to selected newspapers provides a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, attacks by Taliban groups have soared and also how NATO commanders fear that Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.
Regardless of your personal opinion of the conflict in Afghanistan or of the leaking of these papers, the material released should be studied. One of the best summarisations of the material can be found at the Guardian’s website:
