Author: Marc Fawzi
Twitter: http://twitter.com/marcfawzi
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SOPA OPERE — Fake Italian for SOAP OPERA –
When Silicon Valley and Wikipedia come out against something you can be CERTAIN 81% of the time that it is not for mere good will or altruistic reasons.
If SOPA does go into effect there is an army of hackers already thinking up ways of going around it.
That “going around it” would ultimately lead to People-Owned And Hacker-Secured P2P Wikipedia (not Jimmy Wales’ own house of corruption), People-Owned And Hacker-Secured P2P Search Engines or P2P-Powered Crawlers (several exist already), People-Owned And Hacker-Secured P2P Twitter, People-Owned And Hacker-Secured P2P Video Sharing Apps (like youtube+bittorrent, i.e. p2p video streaming, which I believe Bittorrent already supports as of the latest/experimental release, but probably not securely) and other populist P2P technologies that would literally take centralized monopolies like Google and Wikipedia out of business.
So those guys.. the Silicon Valley crowd… they’re fighting it for their own interest, not for freedom. If they cared about freedom they would have exercised their “influence” (money is free speech now according to the Supreme Court) to reverse the “Citizen United” Supreme Court decision re: corporate personhood, which is the greatest already-exercised threat to freedom and national security (very close to being outright treason.) As I write this, foreign governments are probably considering funding some of our political candidates, if they haven’t done so, or at least they CAN at any time they choose to. You may be wondering how is that related? Well, think about it: corporate donors with anonymous shareholders (loosely but materially linked to foreign state actors) can now fund Presidential Candidates in the United States. For how long will the world’s supposed superpower be able to protect the freedoms of its citizens? (never mind the Internet or the planet at large)
And as for the long term implications of being dependent on Google & Youtube, Wikipedia, eBay, Twitter, etc, we are totally screwed. If those companies turn fascist (which they have in many sneaky and yet to be fully blown ways) then what is our recourse? If we don’t build our own P2P and Wireless Mesh/private-satellite infrastructure then forget it all, the Internet as we know it will be a thing of the past one day. You think Google and the telecom majors that operate the satellites, undersea cables and backbones will be on their good behavior forever or that they will _be_ forever? History tells us otherwise, which is why we, the people, need to have our own Internet that we, the people, own and operate. Leaving governments and corporations in charge of our vital communication infrastructure is not what we need for a bright future.
So go ahead bring on SOPA or whatever bullshit. It would trigger a much needed wave of transformation, from centralized monopolies to people owned P2P solutions.
Capitalism is inevitably changing to something far more humane. Time for business leaders to stop resisting and start transforming with it. It will be better for everyone. There is a great opportunity for those who dare to leave the herd, but it certainly requires the courage and the commitment to chart a new path, not just awareness of the need for it.
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