civil disobedience

Sports, Politics and Resistance

Tommie Smith was the winner of the 200-meter dash at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico. His teammate John Carlos came third.

carlos-smith.jpg

“The two American athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty…” Both the americans and the silver medalist wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges. “Carlos had forgotten his black gloves, but Norman suggested that they share Smith’s pair, with Smith wearing the right glove and Carlos the left. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Smith and Carlos delivered the salute with heads bowed, a gesture which became front page news around the world. As they left the podium they were booed by the crowd.” Wikipedia

This is a classic image in symbolic resistance which has been an inspiration to all those who struggle.

The coming Chinese Olympics have already been the target of political campaigns. The Chinese civil rights record is a natural target for acts of civil disobedience – whether symbolic or not.

In order to prevent any such things the British Olympic chiefs are going to force athletes to sign a contract promising not to speak out about China’s appalling human rights record – or face being banned from traveling to Beijing. (Daily Mail)

OK, so maybe there cannot be any official positions taken from the participating countries but to prevent individuals from protesting is going to far. The Chinese naturally see the Olympics as a perfect opportunity to present their position and of course this has not gone unopposed – for example AOL video, RSF, and Yahoo.

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Resistance Technology Seminar

On Thursday next week (14/2) I will be holding a seminar on technology and resistance. The goal of this seminar is to develop my material which will be included as a book chapter in an upcoming work. Here is an abstract:

The purpose of this chapter is to look at the ways in which technology can be used in civil disobedience. The chapter will analyze the legal weaknesses faced by those wishing to conduct acts of civil disobedience using the Internet as a communications infrastructure. This approach is often referred to as functional equivalence and this chapter will address the following questions. What is functional equivalence? What obstacles are faced by disobedience online? Is the Internet failing as an infrastructure of democratic disobedience?

The background material for the seminar is available here. It is based upon my thesis which is available online from here.

Time: 15.15-17.00 (we usually go get a beer afterwards)
Place: the Annedalsseminariet, Konstepidemins väg 2, room 325

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Web2.0 & Resistance

It is easy to recognize the potential social benefits of web2.0 networking sites. This may be why when they are flooded with pointless, time-consuming trivia the frustration of some is quick to rise to the surface.

This is why, despite (or maybe because of) widespread popularity people tend to question (I have written here) the value of Facebook and other sites, for example Hodgkinson of the Guardian, have argued eloquently against it on a wide range of arguments.

And yet occasionally it is interesting to see that the organizational potential of these site are put to a use beyond the goal of replacing quality with quantity, deep friendship with networks.

The idea of the protests against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, was born less than a month ago on the social networking Web site Facebook, and more than 100,000 people in 165 cities around the world confirmed their participation. (CNN)

Their are many stories told of the utility of social networking sites and some of them are bound to be true. And yet it is difficult to keep from becoming cynical. An apocryphal tale I heard recently was about a conversation between two young adults overheard on a bus:

First young adult: I have joined Amnesty.

Second young adult: Thats great! Is that a cause or a group*

—

* If this makes no sense to you then you are probably not on Facebook

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I wouldn't steal

The European Green Parties have begun a counter-attack on media propaganda. Most media companies claim that if you download a film you are just as likely to steal a handbag, break into a car or shoplift. These are ridiculous claims but somebody needed to say this out loud.

So enter the Greens! With their short film and their website they are making the fundamental and important point that making a copy is fundamentally different from stealing.

The media industry has failed to offer viable legal alternatives and they will fail to convince consumers that sharing equals stealing. Unfortunately, they have succeeded in another area – lobbying to adapt laws to criminalize sharing, turning consumers into criminals. They argue that their laws are necessary to [support artists], but in reality all they’re protecting is their own profits.

The Greens in Europe and worldwide has been opposing these laws. We believe that consumers are willing to pay if offered good quality at a fair price. We also believe that sharing is expanding culture – not killing it.

To protest against the faulty propaganda from the industry, we made our own film. The difference is – you can choose whether you want to watch this one.

Check out the I wouldn’t steal website and watch the film on YouTube or download it as a torrent. Oh and the movie is licensed under Creative Commons (by-nc) so you can even make your own remix version – try doing that legally with the industry propaganda.

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Steal This Film II

Copyright never was what it used to be and the struggle to define the purpose and limits over the protection of intellectual property (or indeed the idea of intellectual property) continues daily.

One example of the ongoing debate is an op-ed in the Swedish paper Expressen a group of Swedish politicians called for the legalization of file sharing. One of the politicians was a police officer. But this is more an example of the exception than the rule.

The real attempt to draw the lines that may limit copyright occur every day and are defined in the way in which we all collectively use our technology. The act of file sharing by an individual is, in of itself, an unimportant act. Taken collectively file sharing is a massive active form of resistance and a re-interpretation of the the general consciousness of justice, right, wrong & morality.

Another important position is taken by those who actively comment and interpret the acts of all those involved in the re-definition of copyright. An important contribution to this is the film Steal this Film II. It features scholars such as Yochai Benkler, Felix Stalder, Siva Vaidhyanathan, and Howard Rheingold and portrays file sharing and the copyright debate as a historical development in the urge to regulate the spread of information.

Over at the Industrial IT Group blog Jonny has written a very good analysis of the importance of the film. Watch the movie, read the analysis and get involved in the most interesting re-defition of law in our time. 


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Anarchist Cookbook Terrorism Material

A 17-year-old was arrested in England for “collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism”. This is naturally terrible. But when you find out that the information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism was the book The Anarchist Cookbook! This is really stupid. Not only is the information simply a collection of readily information but the book is also available online and also on the Amazon UK page. So why should this get you arrested.

Picture 17-4 The teenager faces two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000.The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year.

The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.

Amazon.com’s page for The Anarchist Cookbook contains a note from the author, William Powell, who says “The book, in many respects, was a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in.” (via BBC & Boing Boing)

What kind of terrorist needs to a buy this silly book? It’s available via links from Wikipedia and its available for download here (among other places). If possession of this book is a violation of the Terrorism Act then would linking to the same be aiding and abetting?

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Birds Return

In May last year I wrote about the pictures of birds which began appearing around central Göteborg. An example of this was this Jackdaw

birds.jpg

The birds gave me an idea and I went out on bird-spotting expeditions and posted my pictures on flickr. Since I only have a free account the birds on flickr cannot be seen anymore – but the good news is that the whole thing further developed my interest in street art.

In a few comments left on this blog today the birdmen of Göteborg, John Skoog and Eric Berglin, (check out their own pictures) tip me off that they will soon be releasing a new publication of some sort (?) – check out their website.

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Free Expression & T-shirts

Did you know that you could be arrested for wearing a t-shirt with an inappropriate text on it? No I am not talking arrested for indecency or for bad taste. Several people in the United States and the United Kingdom have been arrested for wearing t-shirts with political messages on them. In July last year I presented several examples of this on this blog.

In 2004 Nicole and Jeff Rank were removed from the event at the West Virginia Capitol in handcuffs after revealing T-shirts with President Bush’s name crossed out on the front. Nicole Rank’s shirt had the words “Love America, Hate Bush” on the back and Jeff Rank’s read “Regime change starts at home”

The good news is that the couple settled their lawsuit against the federal government for $80,000, the American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday (via ABC news).

It’s good to hear that the even if protesters are arrested the right to freedom of expression is still a valued and protected right. However, the threat of being arrested is not something that most people want to experience and therefore freedom of expression is diminished even when people are compensated later.

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Make Internet TV

Sure going to the big events and meeting the big speakers is really cool. But in most cases we have read the opinions and ideas of the big speakers. The best thing about conferences, workshops and meetings is the serendipitous meetings. Today at breakfast I was introduced to someone from makeinternettv.org (Make Internet TV).

This is a great outreach site which provides information about how to use technology to shoot videos and to publish them online. The site is organised in an informative and attractive six point layout:

  1. Equip
  2. Shoot
  3. Edit
  4. License
  5. Publish
  6. Promote

In addition to this the site also has a great wiki.

This site strives to help people to create their own videos and find their audiences through the Internet. Naturally this is a valuable store of information for individuals but I see this as an important tool for activists attempting to spread their message to a wider audience.

Most activists are focused on their issues and sometimes even consider marketing (beyond leaflets) to be a suspicious activity. With sites such as these activist groups will be enabled to create attractive information and supply it to the world.

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Secret Numbers

Have you been following the recent blog craze on the topic of Digg and the HD DVD key? Basically the Digg team deleted a story that linked to the decryption key for HD DVDs after receiving a take down demand and all hell broke loose. More stories appeared and were deleted, and users posting the stories were suspended.

Naturally this just made things more exciting and the number now appears on over 50 000 websites, as a set of colors, a poem and at least one t-shirt!

Many of the blogs reporting this news have been in anguish over the fact that numbers should not be copyrightable but this is acutally missing the point. Fred von Lohmann (EFF) clarifies the situation in a neatly written post:

Is the key copyrightable? It doesn’t matter. The AACS-LA takedown letter is not claiming that the key is copyrightable, but rather that it is (or is a component of) a circumvention technology. The DMCA does not require that a circumvention technology be, itself, copyrightable to enjoy protection.

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