When Outlaws Hold the Moral Edge

It was not a fun week for a cloister of Democrats who like to think of themselves as liberals - Rep. John Conyers, Sen. Al Franken, Sen. Harry Reid, Sen. Patrick Leahy. In the week of furor involving the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate, the only Democrats preserving some shred of independent thinking were President Obama and Nancy Pelosi. The Leahy-Franken-Conyers crew ended up looking like shills for the big media barons, particularly the industry associations Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Some people just didn't know when to stop digging their own holes. When Republican Rep. Lamar Smith read the writing on the wall and pulled SOPA on Jan. 20, Leahy complained loudly that he was being forced to do the same with PIPA due to populist thugs. Former Sen. Christopher Dodd, who now serves as a cheap-suit shill for MPAA, called the Internet blackout initiated by Wikipedia, Reddit, Google, et. al. on January 18 "immature and silly." Of course, thuggish comments were not limited to present and future members of Congress. Hollywood unions, including Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild, came out with strong pro-SOPA statements on Jan. 19, proving that they are not unions of a traditional sort, but company unions beholden to the large studios.

The news media tried to quell the interesting series of events on Jan. 19 when the Justice Department pulled off a multinational raid on the business of Megaupload (which may have been a White House attempt to appease Hollywood), and Anonymous followed up the raid with its broadest assault yet on the computer systems of 11 federal agencies, nine film studios, and the offices of MPAA and RIAA. Let's face it, Congress caved on Jan. 20 by withdrawing SOPA and PIPA because all hell was breaking loose.

So-called liberal members of Congress were grumbling Jan. 20 because independent citizen-activists of all types caught them with their hands in the media-giant corporate cookie jar, and they couldn't easily give their actions a veneer of do-gooderism. They were shilling for Hollywood, just like Chris Dodd. If Dodd can get George Mitchell to serve as a mediator between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, it's possible an intellectual property act can be drafted which does not fundamentally destroy commerce on the web, though I am skeptical.

But something else is bothering representatives of both political parties. In emails, phone calls, and correspondence to representatives, constituents (many of whom were also supporters of the Occupy movement) let it be known that, given the choice, they would prefer the outlaw behavior of Megaupload or Anonymous to the daily way of doing business of elected representatives. I wrote a letter to Dodd in which I stated that nihilism against a corporate-government infrastructure is to be preferred over the government itself, even if it is destructive in nature.

Obviously, when we get into destructiveness of the Anonymous or Black Bloc variety, we have to be careful. It's like applauding the work of Somali pirates, invisible hackers, Bonnie & Clyde, or gangsta rappers, merely because they're disrupting the system. Even nihilism can have its moral, amoral, and immoral variants. But the fake liberals in Congress should have gotten the message during the SOPA-PIPA debates - it's not just the lobbyist-authored bills we don't like, we don't like the entire government-corporate infrastructure you represent.

Bono, Fire Your Damn Manager!

It's fun to constantly point out the inconsistencies of U2 lead singer Bono, and some analysts make a career of it. Bono's work with and concern for the poor has been legitimate, but you have to wonder about a guy who actually likes to hang with Paul Wolfowitz.

While we're on the subject of company kept, Bono and The Edge and gang had better take a second look at lifelong manager Paul McGuinness. The blog world is abuzz with McGuinness' Jan. 28 speech in Cannes on the future of the music industry. Actually, his assessment of the failures and foibles of record companies and musicians is spot-on in the first half of the speech. And then he takes on Silicon Valley.

First of all, "hippie values" in the technology industry? Where has McGuinness been in analyzing uber-capitalists? These are the Ayn Rand slaves, dude! But more important, where does he come off dissing Abbie Hoffman? The most important aspect of hippie culture in the 1960s was the nihilist and comedic trend of Yippie culture. If technology supporters behind peer-to-peer music services and MP3 harbor any Steal This Book! trends (which I find laughable), it's probably a good thing. The real danger in the modern world is allowing the transnational capitalists to control the entire game, while sending the big bad Recording Industry Association of America against those poor little file-stealers. Anarchists seeking to limit the power of large corporations are a healthy rage-against-the-machine, blow-against-the-empire trend, like the Barbary Pirates during the expansion of the British empire. If I had to choose between EMI and the Yippies, I'd choose Yippies every time. And if Bono doesn't share that opinion enough to tell his manager to go take a hike, then Bono is indeed the kind of two-faced hypocrite his critics have claimed for years.

Hats Off to Radiohead, Death to RIAA

I don't care what a damn jury had to say about it, the Recording Industry Association of America is a despicable organization for filing suits like these. File-sharing will prevail, and the RIAA will die before the decade is out. Meanwhile, more musicians may be forced by necessity to go the direction Radiohead is headed, offering downloads of its new album for whatever price the public wants to pay. I'd love to get the LP+CD hard copy, but what with exchange rates, $81 is just too painful for a deluxe In Rainbows.