We The Free

With so many governments jumping on the “let’s disconnect pirates” bandwagon, it strikes me as a pertinent time to offer up an alternative.

First why do we need an alternative? Shouldn’t pirates be disconnected so they can’t re-offend? Perhaps from one point of view; however the same governments that want to disconnect people also seem to think that Internet access is a human right. So how do we get into a situation where the same people are giving us two completely opposed views in different sentences?

First off, let’s figure out what contributes to making the Internet a human right.

It’s basically possible to do anything online, and more and more companies (and governments) are pushing to have their services accessed and accessible online.

• I can pay all of my bills online, either through Internet banking, or direct credit card payments. More and more companies are sending email or online bills. Genesis Energy does this now, and we can contribute to helping the environment by changing as many statements as possible to be electronic.
• I can get medical advice at the click of a button, which is most helpful if a) I can’t afford, or am not prepared to pay for, a doctor’s extravagant charges for what may be nothing; or b) it may be the middle of the night and my GP is closed.
• I can do my weekly food shopping online and have it delivered to my house. This is wonderful for those without a car, or senior citizens, or those with disabilities.
• I can post to forums about my (theoretical) depression and (theoretical) potential suicide, and I can get people to help me. One case recently had a NZer post on an online forum where a forum administrator in the States contacted NZ local authorities. The result was that the kiwi got the help he needed and it probably saved his life.
• Banks like ASB and Bank Direct prefer you to do everything online. The advantages are that your bank is available 24×7, even if you’re in the most remote location. Those who work odd shifts can do their banking when the banks are closed.
• Parents used to have to buy huge sets of encyclopedias for their children to study with. And these would typically get updated every few years. Now search engines like Google, and free online encyclopedias like Wikipedia (available in more languages than I care to count) allow unlimited study potential at a nothingth of the cost.
• Sites like TradeMe allow people to buy literally anything they choose. For cost conscious people, this is a boon. I know a single mother who used to buy and sell clothing for her gaggle of children on TradeMe. Once the kids grew out of their clothes, being able to sell everything again at a more reasonable rate than she’d get selling to a store, she managed to keep all her children clothed for the paltry sum the government gave her each week while still managing to feed and shelter them.
• For the business minded, creating a company can be done completely online, and in the future things like this will be online only. Tax returns, company returns, applying for GST numbers, etc are all online. The IRD have even started turning their documents into PDFs that can be filled in electronically.

As time goes on, more and more critical services will be moved online, and then eventually will only be available online. Once this happens, terminating an Internet connection will effectively be equal to jail time.

So how can people get around a potential termination? To show how fruitless these efforts are, it has been publicly stated that anyone disconnected from one ISP will just reconnect to another. But it’s worse than that (from a policing point of view). If a connection under dad’s name gets terminated, they’ll sign back up under mum’s name. If they get disconnected again, they’ll sign up under the kids’ names. So they’ll get several “strikes” per ISP. To complicate matters even more, how will companies that bundle package services like Sky and telephone deal with an Internet disconnection? Will this result in the family’s phone also being cut off? Will that happen by accident when some helpdesk staffers see a termination request? Of course it will. People have been disconnected in the past when requesting a move. Hell, I’ve had my power disconnected when a neighbour moved. Humans are fallible. We make mistakes.

But these people are criminals, I hear some cry. They deserve all they get.

Well, not quite everything. Besides, there are already laws in place for copyright infringement. It’s already illegal. All new laws serve to do are make life easier for the copyright holders. And when I say easier, I really mean cheaper. The only ones pushing this copyright agenda are the big media industries. They don’t become big fatcats by spending money or giving artists fair royalties; no, they make a lot of money by not spending money unnecessarily. And to them, an unnecessary expense is taking alleged pirates to court. The only reason they’re pushing for more laws being put in place is so that those rightsholders can sidestep the legal system, thus saving themselves wads of cash.

Earlier this year, a proposal for law change came to a head when citizens rose up against it, and finally made the new National government aware that the previous Labour government had written up a piece of law that had no due process whatsoever. Just bang, we say you’re guilty, so you’re guilty. This came to be known as Guilt By Accusation, and needless to say, your average Kiwi was none too happy with it. It was scrapped pending reassessment. So it’s being rewritten.

The intent, however, with the new proposal (which at least involves due process) is that the ISP will turn over the identity of the alleged offender and the rightsholder will be able to prosecute. Now a few things haven’t been mentioned. These will surely need to be considered going forward. One is privacy. Surely there has to be a lot of work to be done before an ISP will hand over customers’ details. It’s not just going to happen just because we’re all pals.

Another that I don’t believe has been mentioned anywhere is the legality of the methods used to collect the information. When authorities want to spy on someone, or tap a phone line, or whatever, they have to go through several legal procedures. In the case of rightsholders spying on Internet users, none of this has happened. They’re just snooping on the Internet. Is that even legal? Should it be? Sure those packets are public and anyone can see them fly by the wire, but when the intent is to monitor a specific user, well, then it becomes cyberstalking doesn’t it?

The rightsholders want to avoid legal process because that saves them money. It’s possible they believe they are entitled to ignore the law — or to be above it.

What makes it all worse is that none of the rightsholders have any idea of how the Internet works. They simply don’t understand that a lot of Internet users have IP addresses that change dynamically. They also don’t understand that sometimes addresses are spoofed — or faked. In fact, when news of this first hit the Net, programmers of file sharing software started injected random IP addresses into their software. So it’s entirely possible that somebody who has never even installed a file sharing program is charged with copyright infringement. This did happen once — the RIAA alleged that an IP address had downloaded several songs and demanded the information of the user be turned over to them. It turns out that IP address was assigned to a printer. Finally, and most importantly, they can’t seem to get their head around the fact that an IP address does not equate to a person, or even a specific computer. As with dynamic addressing, this can change weekly, daily, or even hourly.

The evidence the rightsholders’ legal eagles use can be modified and falsified too easily — by both sides. These people simply don’t understand the technology they’re dealing with. All they know is that there are criminals out there pirating their intellectual property. And this makes them blind to every other side of the argument.

I’m not going to go into the losses actually incurred, because quite frankly that’s another (long) article, besides which most rational people know it’s complete bullshit. Rightsholders appear to be under the mistaken impression that everybody on the planet has disposable income to buy anything they want, but choose not to, hence they pirate stuff. Well, to put it bluntly (and shortly), if it wasn’t technically possible to pirate music or movies, then most of the people who do pirate things would just miss out. So curbing piracy isn’t going to result in a magic flood of loot into the publishers’ money bins.

It’s a false — and completely unrealistic — utopia.

However, assuming this goes forward, and that other governments around the world attempt to implement similar laws (no doubt from pressure by industry lobby groups rather than any political desire to do this unmotivated), I have an idea that would cut down on piracy and still allow humans their basic right to surf porn, um, I mean access the necessities of life. No this will not stop piracy, but I hold the firm opinion that the only way to stop piracy is to make the content-filled media cheaper than blank media. And that held true in the days when all software was distributed on floppy disk. But now with such immense hard drives, that’s pretty much moot. People will continue to pirate stuff, often just because they can. I know of people who will pirate an album even though they have no intent of ever listening to it. They just take it because it’s there and they see media publishers as rich, greedy bastards. Of course, there are as many different reasons that people pirate media as there are stains on my underpants, but it’s a given that piracy will not stop.

So what can be done to reign in this scourge? Well, assuming everything has been done above board to get to the point that it is proven in a court of law, then the punishment should fit the crime. Don’t terminate their Internet connections — put them on dialup.

That’ll fuck ‘em.