liz_marcs | The Perfect Storm...

Current Mood: hopeful

The Perfect Storm...

Let's see if LJ lets me post this.

I've been involved off and on with fandom since...ooooo...grammar school (that would be pre-teens for you non-U.S. people). I can't say for sure, but definitely almost that long.

And I have to say, before this week the only Perfect Storm I knew about was the one I lived through back in 1991 when the No Name nor'easter battered the New England coast and killed the crew of the Andrea Gail out of Gloucester in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

And yet, here I am, staring at what is possibly a true Perfect Storm in the virtual world of fandom culture. It is amazing and terrifying to behold.

You know the story of the recent wanks, I'm sure, so I'm only going to give a few bullet points here:

The infamous "Take Me Now" Mary Jane statue from Sideshow that had the female wing of comics fandom (and a few of us not part of it) highly incensed. The outrage and the wank reached to such levels that it actually made the main stream news, and had artist Adam Hughes, who created the art upon which the statue was based, crying about those mean ol' girls hashing his wet dreams.
FanLib and their boneheaded plan to earn money from free content provided by fanfic writers, and the overwhelming unification of fandom against that mess. The overwhelming spit in the eye from fandom even has the founders crying about meeeeeeen girls. (Yes, the link is to my own LJ, but really, it's all over LJ at this point. The links I've got there are a good start.)
The LJ near-crash that has been caused by DDoS attack. While LJ is fighting against it, some of us have been cut off from posting, including a lot of fannish folk.

The timing of everything between Mary Jane and FanLib, which has thrown a bit of a spotlight on fandom in general and LJ in particular, coupled with the DDoS attack on LJ, has resulted in, ummm, an interesting rumor that LJ is being pressured to censor fannish content and dump fannish members.

When I saw it hitting my FList this morning I was skeptical at best. It was too vaguely worded, and I couldn't find a source of the rumor. The closest I was able to get was the dreaded, "I have a friend who heard from a friend..."

Yeah, not exactly winning points with me, either.

Think about this: there are quite a few actively fannish people among our LJ overlords. If this pressure really was happening, the news would've been out at the speed of light. The confirmation, complete with documentation, would've followed at the speed of sound.

All I can say is: Hurrah! My instincts were right. It's nothing more than bad timing for a DDoS attack.

While I enjoyed this proof that a rumor can run around the world while the truth is still trying to find its boots, I did not enjoy seeing my fellow U.S. citizens on LJ freak the fuck out. It drove home just how precarious all of us in the U.S. of A feel when it comes to our ability to communicate with each other without restriction or some authoritarian peering over our shoulders to make sure we "only color between the lines."

Yes, yes, I am aware that LJ does reserve the right to shut us down at any time, but I'm speaking to a larger point here — namely justified paranoia.

Oh, joy. We're now a-scared of forces within our own country ranging from big business to U.S.-based Internet service providers to our government.

The sad thing is, we're right to be a-scared.

Chugging along in the background, whether you know it or not, are proposed laws that will infringe even further on the rights of the U.S. citizen with respect to their online activities. Note these two proposed laws below:

Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which was proposed by our sleazy attorney general Alberto Gonzalez, is essentially a thought-crime law. According to Wired:

Essentially, the bill would turn copyright law into something more akin to existing drug laws: The government could seize personal property, wiretaps would become legal for the first time, violators could face life in prison and, in an ambiguous and far-reaching provision, the mere attempt to violate a copyright would become a crime.

The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, proposed by Gonzales on Monday, would amend current U.S. copyright law to give the government far more power to investigate and prosecute cases, expand the scope of what constitutes a criminal act, and would stiffen penalties, including adding life terms for those whose activities cause death.

Among the proposed changes, the bill would make it easier to charge someone as a repeat offender and stiffen the penalty for recidivism. It would expand forfeiture provisions to allow the government to seize any property used in the commission of a crime -- a PC, a home, cash on hand.

Exporting pirated material would also become a crime and the bill would grant the feds wiretapping authority, which it currently lacks. The "attempt" provision, stipulating that mere intent constitutes a crime, means that the law could conceivably be expanded to interpret a computer full of music next to a spindle of blank CDs as an act of piracy.

Just in case you're wondering, the vaguely-worded nature of the law means that it could apply to just about anything, up to an including fannish activities. Think about that. Fanfiction, LJ icons, fan-created soundtracks and videos all use copyrighted material.

Hell, thanks to a vaguely worded child porn law a grandmother was charged for taking pictures of her grand-daughters in their birthday suits.

Does this proposal worry me? You betchya.

Sure, maybe I'm being paranoid. But I live in a U.S. where the feds have decided that they reserve the right to tap my DSL and phone lines on the flimsiest of excuses. I live in the U.S. where shit like this happens.

Yeah, to say this law gives me the heebie-jeebies is an understatement.
Last year, there was a proposed law that would've forbidden schools and libraries from letting computer users link to social networking sites. In case you're wondering, the so-called "MySpace Bill" could've affected, oh, LiveJournal, GreatestJournal, JournalFen, Facebook, WordPress...in short, sites where blogging occurs.

It could also could've potentially affected sites that support IM chat and have discussion boards. If it had passed and it did apply, it would've affected Television Without Pity, Yahoo, Google, Usenet...I think you get the picture here.

In short, this law could have potentially cut us off from each other, or limited access to Wild West of the Web to only those of us who can afford our own computer and our own link to the Internet. It would've further separated the haves (even if we're haves by the skin of our teeth) from the have-nots.

And do you want to know what the excuse was for the law? To "protect the children." Fuck that noise. I've become convinced if these authoritarian nannies had any say about it, they'd make it illegal for any child under the age of 16 to walk on the sidewalk all by their lonesome.

The only reason why it didn't get anywhere was because it was pushed back by bloggers and other assorted online netizens.

In any case, this should scare the shit out of you. It sure as hell scares the shit out of me. The fact is, this bill was proposed, and it was under serious consideration at one point. It took mass action from disparate parties to shut it down.

Which gets me thinking: and it's something that I think we've all overlooked.

Look around you. Look at your FList. Instead of seeing that FList as a bunch of single pages, think of them as a list of individuals. And each one of those individuals have FLists of their own.

Then think about how fast information flashes across LJ — be it fannish stuff, or memes, or wank. Think how it sometimes jumps out of or into fandom, or communities with specialized interests, crossing not just the boundaries we put up via our interest lists, but also some real life barriers, like...geography, language, and national borders.

Then I want you to think of how many people are here. No, think about it. There are almost 13 million people here. (Source: LJ stats.) Sure, active bloggers are somewhat less than that, but even if you cut that number in half, that's still roughly 7.5 million people.

Do you wanna know what that is, kiddoes?

Power.

Now before you laugh it off, I want you to think about something:

Remember how back in March 2006 there were a bunch of protests over draconian actions (both real and proposed) taken with respect to illegal aliens in the U.S.? Remember how one of those protests involved 15,000 L.A. students who staged a walk-out and school administrators were caught off guard because there wasn't even a rumor this was going to happen?

Wanna know how they organized? MySpace.

A social networking site.

In fact, the social networking site that was the primary target of the so-called "MySpace Bill." The same bill that got shot down by mass action on the part of the online community.

*beams innocently*

Now I ain't sayin' that maybe my fellow U.S. citizens on LJ should be getting organized. And I ain't sayin' that maybe my fellow U.S. citizens should be dousing their friendly neighborhood Congress-critters with, oh, their opinions.

But wouldn't it be kind fun of we did?

I mean, people on LJ raised such a ruckus over Mary Jane and FanLib that people outside of our little world of LJ (not to mention outside of our little world of fandom) actually heard us bitch about it.

Now think of what we could do if we decided to start stomping on proposed laws that are not in our best interests.

While I'm not a Firefly fan, I truly can't think of a better call here:

I think that it's time we all aim to misbehave.

ETA: Thanks to

mpoetess from pointing out that the fight over the so-called "MySpace Bill" happened last year. The original text has been altered to reflect that change. A big thank you to

mpoetess for correcting me.

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It's important to be very clear as to what you'd like to do with the (still hypothetical) political power of LJ users.

It seems, for example, much more practical (if less viscerally satisfying) to lobby for clear language in any new intellectual property legislation to protect "ordinary users" from aggressive prosecution as opposed to trying to kill the bill outright - though if there are enough anti-government liberals/libertarians in the Senate killing it might be possible. If nothing else, there are very serious industrial-scale threats to content producers and distributors that may well require new criminal penalties. I believe an effort that respects those legitimate concerns and focuses on ensuring the legislation is tightly written is more likely to be taken seriously than a movement whining about "teh ev0l kapitalists."

Or maybe I'm just the token Republican on your FList :)

The real difficulties in this are:

A) Figuring out exactly what the LJ/blogging/social networking community wants the final legislation to do about our concerns.

B) Figuring out how to leverage the LJ and larger online community to effect political change: emails are nice, but words in bills are changed by firms on K Street.

C) Deciding whether or not dealing with all the LJ-drama and wank would be worth the potential benefits of building a politically useful movement online.

I've become convinced if these authoritarian nannies had any say about it, they'd make it illegal for any child under the age of 16 to walk on the sidewalk all by their lonesome.

Second only to the Church of the Holy Gamete is the Worship of the Sacred Child, in whose name no one should be allowed any freedoms at all, on the off chance that an innocent child might be scarred by exposure to reality. Keep 'em ignorant, unless they step out of line, in which case we lock them up with hardened criminals and throw away the key. After all, there are only two kinds of children, ~~madonnas and whores~~ angels and devils.

Good rant!

FYI for some of your readers -- if you want to know at least vaguely what's up with LJ at any given time, read

status; if the journal's down, try http://status.livejournal.org -- that will at least document site suckiness within a few hours of what's going on. That and

lj_maintenance will give you a decent picture of planned and unplanned downtime. (And Wednesday nights seem to have routine stuff going on regularly, too.)

I got into volunteering for LJ because I wanted to know the minute LJ started to suck and why it was happening. I'm glad I did.

(I'm surfing around and playing linkball, and it's amazing the communication power we have here.)

It's absolutely a step in the wrong direction! Like so many others being taken in America right now. As a former fanfiction writer (and now professional writer), I see this law as just tossing out the baby (the average citizen) with the bathwater (big-time pirates). It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

What do they think the kids actually do online?

I dunno what it's like over there, but I know kids on MySpace and other sites at sixteen/seventeen years of age who show off their breast implants. In Sweden there's even a site called snyggast.nu where teens can basically vote how sexy/beautiful/cute other teens are. That I can't condone.

But you are right that it shouldn't affect people who doesn't have internet at home - I remember how horrible it was for me in high school, and all I wanted to do was my homework.

As for your post up there? I say give 'em hell.

"Then I want you to think of how many people are here. No, think about it. There are almost 13 million people here. (Source: LJ stats.) Sure, active bloggers are somewhat less than that, but even if you cut that number in half, that's still roughly 7.5 million people.

Do you wanna know what that is, kiddoes?

Power."

Not really, no.

Livejournal users have exactly the power that LJ Abuse decides to let them have.

And while (I did a series of random spot checks a few times) every journal on livejournal is no more than four jumps away from any other journal, information does not spread particularly well through livejournal: major storms can go on in one set of users/communities, that simply don't spread beyond that set. For any issue that is majorly important to you, the majority of livejournallers will never have heard of it. (This is the case even if it spreads off livejournal into blogs.)

From this blog post, writing about a specific issue that annoyed me, and in turn about a major storm in June 2006, I found out about two other major storms on livejournal - both of which had happened when I had an active account, but neither of which I had heard of at the time. (And all speak to the power Six Apart has over livejournal: which is real and inarguable power, not the small power small groups of livejournallers think they have.)

http://blogs.feministsf.net/?p=64

Yes, being an Argentinian, I can't believe the things the USA government has tried to do (or has done).
You know, my country has been down that path. It doesn't help anyone.

Hey!

I lived in Argentina for a while back in the 90's, before things got publicly messed up. And yeah, I always thought the States would not go down that road. Guess I was wrong.

Oh, the '90s. When everything shined and wasn't definitely gold.

What I remember from the Country was pretty awesome, and when stuff got real bad a couple of years ago, well, it sounds stupid, but I really felt for you guys.

Well, it ought to be all right as long as nobody in fandom is dumb enough to tell them what the fandom terminology means.

You think anybody has to tell these people anything? One trip to urban dictionary, or hell google, and they'll find out exactly what it means and probably get some examples.

As a peruvian I must say I agree with your statements.

I know I should have witty and insightful commentary on your reply, but all I can think is this -

I LOVE YOUR ICON. XD

*thumbs-up!*

No, it's not stupid. XP It's nice and, well, human.

Oh, hell.

I've heard about the Intellectual Property bill lately, and needless to say, it scares the shit out of me.

Last year, there was a proposed law that would've forbidden schools and libraries from letting computer users link to social networking sites. I can confirm the panic that came out of that proposal; I was still in high school when that was going on, and the computers at both my school and the public library decided to get ahead and block all social networking sites (and then some), including MySpace, Facebook, YSI, Blogger, etc. LJ and GJ only escaped the blocks because they're virtually unknown in my hometown. Kids found proxy servers to get around the blocks, which was rather wonderful.

Terrified me out of my mind, that did.

And all the recent wank in fandom, putting us in the spotlight? Makes me really uneasy.

Here's to pushing back, yeah?

Er, "computers at both my school" should be "TPTB at both my school."

I need to learn to type.

I just wanted to say that you're post enlightened me about this latest lj wank (apparently I live under a rock) and about these bills and political actions that have been attempted. So I wanted to thank you for that.

Plus, I really appreciate you throwing in that Firefly reference.

wow, hi, you're awesome.

Lovely. =)

Dude, I like you and I like your opinons. I pretty much agree with what's been said. Good job!

*laughs a lot* Holy Gamete!! ♥♥♥

Hi, I was connected here through by a link and I amazed by this post, I didn't even realize all this was happened and woah. I agree with your last sentence whole heartedly. I hope you don't mind, but I am linking this on facebook. I know things are bad, didn't know they were this bad.

I'm not gonna lie, I thought that too.

There have been fatal copyright infringements?

Actually, yes. Fake aeroplane brakes made from mild steel that melted as a Singapore Air Force Strikemaster jet fitted with them was landing in 1980, numerous incidences of fake car parts which have failed in similarly catastrophic circumstances, and of course pharmaceuticals marked with the trademarks of legitimate companies which in fact contained only chalk and which had zero effect upon fatal diseases. Documented in "The Steal" by Brian Freemantle (1986).

None of which, of course, has any bearing whatsoever on somebody downloading an episode of 'Heroes' because it hasn't been shown on TV in their country yet, or writing their own story around characters from Shrek. Or even the illegal distribution on the net of copies of PotC 3 when it's only just appearing in cinemas. The media corporations would just like to be able to have the biggest guns possible with which to threaten those who (they feel) threaten their profits.

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The Perfect Storm...

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