Category: Cory Doctorow

A Response to some current events.

A Joke for January 2012:

“What are you in for, buddy?” said the Bad Bwoy

“I got drunk and drove my car into a breast implant centre, killing two pedestrians and injuring six women because my wife planned to have em’ removed, i got 4 years.” Pipa replied… “what are you in for?”

“I shared the biggest ever batch of classified documents about the inner workings of global governments, corporations and banks, I just got out of the hole where they mentally tortured me. I’m in for life, me.” said the Bad Bwoy.

“And you, hey, you, what you in for kid?” Pipa asked the third prisoner.

“I downloaded the complete Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies for my grandma, I got five years”

“What!”

Joyce and Pipa

While the copyright on the major works of the Irish Genius James Joyce expired on the 1st January 2012, moving them into the public domain, to my delight, the rest of the world’s literature, film, music, arts and business are threatened by Sopa and Pipa, exaggerated draconian laws which like most bad policy, in fact, work to increase the confusion and do little to curb the problem. I wonder…is Joyce having the last laugh at us all stumbling around within the English language networks and webs, meanwhile, surrounded by the cloaking tech-cloud of all languages, translation tools, and nearly all combinations of languages and possible phrases, slang and everything under the sun, together swirling around in cyberspace, copying itself into a giant bubbling soup, our internet, like Joyce’s Wakean ‘nat’ language, seeking replication and interuption, new combinations.

Tony Bliar: Sports Chimp

I saw that old cheating chimp Tony Blair in a disgusting news item from the even more disgusting, to me, Time magazine reporting his sport campaign that got me hopping mad there for a few minutes yesterday (Jan. 18th) but soon, I realized, he’s not worth shedding many finger strokes over is he? (do I look bovverd?) so I skip the two-faced Bush puppy, war monger-lyer, and move on…Name calling always feels better while typing than reading afterwards.

Faith-Based

Many words have been shed on the general troubles in the middle East, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan. It’s complex, I can say that much. Yet I would repeat here my shared hope, somewhat riffing on something I heard from uncle Bob once, the general idea that if all sides in these conflicts were to drop their conflicting–equal and opposite religious faith–which tells them that they and they’re group, party, or nation, whatever and only they’re group, party or nation, whatever; know the divine holy truth, then, maybe, some progress might be made in sharing the abundance of resources surrounding them.

Negotiating towards making global trade, shared resources, without being dictated too based upon some out-of-date scripture or totalitarian spy state system that embodies similar religious ‘faith based’ ideology, such as: trust in your government and one nation under surveilance. O.K  

The problem of faith-based government, meanwhile, gestates in the west causing equal havoc and confusion. Not checking the facts for yourself can leave you with piles of useless, empty bonds, useless laws and law enforcement and, a self-destructive industry built upon munitions, warfare and what Bucky Fuller aptly calls ‘Killingry’. Wake up, think for yourself, stop the war, stop the cuts.

Rupert Sopadoch

That of all the scum bags to come out in support of the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ Rupert Murdoch crawled out from a stone and said (tweeted?) something uninformed and typically volatile on the issue, how do these damn papers and news websites publish his words without reminding us of the recent Newscorp Phone Hacking Scandal? How contradictory his words seem, to me, in the light of facts about that case.

I implore my readers and friends to boycott the entertainment industry as far as the super majors are concerned, and at your own discretion, but, please be conscious of the fact that when you buy movie tickets, and DVD’s and CD’s from the Major labels and production factories your supporting them and their ilk, you are what you buy into, Food, clothing, drinks, music, entertainment, everything you interact with. Nobody is perfect, but make an effort to think. A new war sounds like fighting talk, but a war metaphor is invoked here, this war, to me, started when entertainment industry stared ‘fattening frogs for snakes’ as the saying goes.

(slight rant) It started, I reckon, when the no-playing motherfuckers in the entertainment business started war/relations with those who challenged they’re authority, the content providers, and so begun signing artists and projects based upon they’re commercial viability opposed to artistic merit (e.g see the latest incarnation: Simon Cowell) and openly attacking any and all alternative entertainment culture (see counter counter-culture history) eventually co-opting them to jive with the slick super-global corporate model, presenting watered down snips trickled out to specific segments of the public in pre-meditated programming, interspersed with adverts and flashy edits, censors and any whims of whoever holds the money, at least, thas’ I see it, after this recent Sopa/Pipa malarchy and the Hollywood, Pop Music industry and Book publishing house support for an incredibly ill thought out and dangerous set of new laws.

Rollingstone leaks

There’s a great interview with Julian Assange in Rollingstone Magazine which, for me, backs up the reasons I like and support Wikileaks in their work, and Assange as an individual who seems totally committed to his work, tha I find mind boggling in its brevity and daring and staright up genius. The global village crisis as defined by Assange reminds me of hagbard Celine’s Law ‘National security is the chief cause of National insecurity’.

This same sentiment, I think, can be distilled from two recommended sources, Cory Doctorow’s excellent presentation ‘The coming war on general computation‘ at the CCC 2011 conference, and Mark Pesce’s brilliant book/on-line interface ‘Nextbillionseconds’. Both of these network minded individuals deploy a sense of optimism and factual knowledge in their illuminating communications. Both reflect the benefits and the migration of information towards ‘open networks’ and the ‘copy and copy and copy’ nature of networks. Thankfully their exciting and rich language outlines the context of Sopa/Pipa and other ‘net censorship’ projects. Very fresh, highly recommended.

Some of their work draws parallels, to my mind, with the war on some drugs and pharmacological Inquisition. Once again we have policy and laws made by people who have very little experience and knowledge of the field, the abuse of generalized terms, ambiguous phrases and disproportionate punishments for potential offenders. I think that Cory has mentioned this connection, emphasizing the drug war without end, like the war on terrorism without end, defined by who, we may ask? and how? As the boundaries between the chemical and the digital and biological blur, this connection between internet prohibition and drug prohibition may fuse into a general ‘information prohibition’.

I think it’s not in the nature of self-owning humanity, in the midst of a rupture or–information explosion—to stop copying, the shit’s gotten everywhere now and cannot be put back inside any Genii bottle or doggy doo bag. The shits already spread all over the bag and the smell will probably never go away.

Peace out peeps, steve fly