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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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.

It was a shitty position to be in, I can tell you. People I knew (personally) were saying they'd been told this by an LJ employee, which was far enough from the source to be questionable but close enough to be possible. Did I say nothing and feel guilty later for not passing on (clearly dubious) information if something DID come of it? Did I say something and contribute to what was likely and hopefully nothing but a rumor?

I really, really wish that LJ had posted something about the DDoS attack. (And I don't know enough about DDoS attacks to know if not talking about them while they're happening is the only way you can mitigate damage, or something.) A statement like "This, specifically, is what's going on," would have gone a long way toward easing the paranoia and irritation that a lot of people were expression on the support boards etc.

*applauds*

My congresscritters are hearing from me on Tuesday morning; these proposed laws are ludicrous. Thanks for the reminder that I've got some civic duties need doin'.

I'm all for it! Let's aim and fire! I'm all set to get rowdy over something in this damn country.

Although, I should say that I am all for limiting or banning access to social networking sites at schools. It eats the kids brains and they'll do nothing else if you let them, plus it jams the servers like hell. At home or someplace not school? Okay.

That said, I'm still fuzzy on if all this is rumor or an actuality? I trust the internet as far as I can pick it up and throw it some days...

How would the "MySpace" law affect users in other countries? Are there any details on whether it's something the sites would have to implement and therefore would have an impact on all it's users or is it something that the end user is going to have to implement and therefore would only affect that one person (or group of people using one computer)?

See, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to be paranoid about it. Given the atmosphere in the U.S. these days, paranoia strikes me as smart.

Now I can see LJ not wanting to advertise a DDoS attack. The servers are overloaded and they don't want to give anyone ideas. But at the very least they should've said they were having technical difficulties with the servers, rather than the vaguely worded answers we were getting.

And, yeah, you were in a tough place since your sources had currency with you. I don't envy your spot at all. I think most people handled it the best they could (and I put you in this spot), but there was a small subset that were hyperventilating and spinning doomsday scenarios.

But the thing that got me is that people were afraid because too many people opened their mouths on this issue or that and drew attention to what actually are serious issues (even if they're under the guise of fandom). Meanwhile, I'm like, "Duuuuude! Can't you see? Power. That's fucking power."

Hence this post. :-)

It wouldn't affect people outside the U.S., not unless they shut down all the U.S.-based social networking sites. In which case, those sites would move off-shore and U.S. based folk would "virtually" move with them.

However, China can control it's off-shore traffic, and the recent Cyberwar between Russia and Estonia shows that a motivated government can shut down off-shore Internet traffic. So moving with the social sites isn't a perfect or bullet-proof option.

You're welcome. ^_^

I have to admit, I wouldn't have thought of this if the recent waves of wank (one after the other) didn't just illustrate the potential that's to be had.

Linked to this post. I hadn't heard a word about the proposed social networking block, but it's definitely something that frightens me.

It's amazing how many limitations of freedom we can justify as being "for the children."

I can see banning it from computers sitting in the classroom, actually, although I can't see teachers failing to enforce a no-"MySpace" rule in the classroom itself.

School libraries, though? Considering that there are some kids who can't access the Internet any other way, and if they're in the wrong neighborhood with no easily accessible public libraries, I have a much, much harder time accepting that.

My issue is that it's all about access for people who might not otherwise have that access.

I can see room for debate on the school issue, certainly, but I think there's a half-way point here that maybe we should look at, rather than just banning access outright.

And now that I've read the report that you linked to in your post I remember a news report (can't remember the source, or even if it was online or on a TV news report) that MySpace have changed their policy on handing over details of known sex offendors to federal agents, they will now actually hand over the details of these people rather than just removing them from the site. I'm assuming this is in response to this proposed law to try and stop it going through.

I was in such a hurry to get this comment posted (and not sure it was going to go through) that it's not even accurate. *Rolls eyes at self*

People I knew (personally) were saying they'd been told this by an LJ employee, which was far enough from the source to be questionable but close enough to be possible.

should be

People I knew (personally) were saying that they'd been told this by a friend of an LJ employee (etc)

Which is definitely a slightly different story. I was hearing a variety of things, including that we couldn't post about it publically because the fact that people were locking down their journals "looked bad." Which, yeah, to someone who thinks we're a bunch of pervs, I guess it *could.*

Now I can see LJ not wanting to advertise a DDoS attack. The servers are overloaded and they don't want to give anyone ideas. But at the very least they should've said they were having technical difficulties with the servers, rather than the vaguely worded answers we were getting.

Yeah, I've gotten some more clear ideas as to what DDoS attacks ARE in the past ten minutes or so, LOL, so now I get why they didn't want to get that specific. But I completely agree that even something as simple as "technical difficulties with the servers" would have had ME, at least, nodding and being a heck of a lot more understanding and patient. Sometimes I just feel like the LJ people (employees, managers, whatever) don't "get" customer service.

The point of your post is a good one, though, and I'm going to come back and read it again when my hair's not dripping down the collar of my shirt. :-)

Power on! And to requote the often-quoted, "Just because you're paranoid does not mean someone isn't out to get you." And in the case of our government, I don't think there can be too much paranoia.

Remember when the conservative wing in this country would shout about "the nanny state" for any social spending? Where are these people now?

Okay, to be fair, there are plenty of true conservatives (as opposed to neo-cons) still yelling about "a nanny state" with some of these draconian proposals, but now you've got more liberals screaming about it. At long last, the liberal and conservative wing of this country have a common cause.

In either case, I just don't get it. What do they think the kids actually do online? And shouldn't they punishing the actual predators as opposed to the kids?

As always, the thing that trips me up is that it's a proposal to block access that will come down very hard on people who wouldn't otherwise have access to the Internet were it not for libraries or school. That's my big problem right there.

It seems to me like you're talking about a good rule, not a good law. An individual teacher, or even an individual school district, absolutely should be able to say students can't use the Internet for personal purposes during class time. But I don't see the need for federal legislation mandating that be the case everywhere.

And I can even think of legitimate academic uses for social networking sites -- looking at TWoP to understand criticism, for example, or viewing political candidates' MySpace pages in a civics class. There's no reason to make the entire site off-limits!

[Edited to fix HTML.]

*nods*

Especially these days.

But I honestly think that enough people start calling their reps, be it on the City Council or in Congress, you'd make them more afraid of losing their jobs than gaining some other advantage.

Nothing scares a pol more than losing their job.

Ahhh, agreed.

Sometimes I forget that some high-profile people are using MySpace and Facebook to reach the masses.

It should be something, I think, that should be left up to the individual school districts which (in theory) are more responsive to the local population. I don't think you can necessarily make a blanket federal law. Some school districts would be a-ok with something like that, other school districts would pitch a fit.

I'm not denying that there isn't a problem with predators on the Internet, and I'm not saying that they shouldn't be policed. MySpace, as a corporate entity is handling it the smart way: watching people with an existing history.

Now you can quibble back and force that sometimes the sexual offender laws in the U.S. are applied in stupid ways, but it's at least a yardstick you can use because on the Internet, no one can tell if you're a granny that got nailed for taking pictures of your grandkids taking a bath or a serial kiddy raper.

Where my issue comes in is that this proposal is the absolutely wrong way to go about it.

Agreed. It amazes me how quickly people embrace big government when it's big in a way they like.

I'm also not sure any child who wasn't already incredibly vulnerable has ever been OMGSCARREDFORLIFE by being hit on online. I understand some men are aggressive and distasteful about it, and certainly they should be punished. But the computer has an off switch, and I don't understand why the powers that be seem to assume teens can't or won't use it. (I know, blaming the victim.)

And, yes, it would hit students who don't have nice shiny computers at home much, much harder than anyone else, and that really seems to go back to classism.

What exactly is DDoS? I'm unsure what you mean by this.
I do wholeheartedly agree that the power of the internet and Lj is immense if we can get organised. It's quite stunning to realize how interconnected we are on LJ. It's like throwing a pebble into a lake, and seeing how many ripples there are from that one little thing.
And it's international...not limited to one country.
I think that it's time we all aim to misbehave.
Word.

A DDoS, otherwise known as a denial-of-service attack occurs when a computer network is "flooded" with virtual bots. It eats up resources, overwhelms the servers, and forces a system-wide slowdown. In worst case scenarios, it can knock a server completely off-line and bring down a whole sites, as well as related sites. (Here's a full explanation.)

The great LJ outage of 2005 was caused by a DDoS attack (LJ was offline for more than a day at that time).

In recent news, the alleged cyberwar between Estonia and Russia involved DDoS attacks that knocked government servers off-line.

There are certain protections in place, but they're not 100%.

Ah, now I get it. Thanks for the explanation.
I vividly remember the great LJ outage of 2005. Never did understand the cause, until now.

I would safely say that about 40% of the reason I use LJ is for academic reasons. The most frequent use of the social networking site? A semi-permanent place to store data. I constantly use LJ to archive papers in a privated entry if my disk freaks out and I can't save it on the A drive for some reason. Also, if you're in teacher education, you have to save everything you do in your education classes for your portfolio. I save them here so they're available within a click of the mouse.

I also used LJ post a survey on religion for Intro to Sociology, which can be found in my memories, which helped me get an A in that class. Not to mention, I also used LJ to get help on my homework, find people to proof-read my papers, and I've used MySpace to help me select professors for a new school I'm going to in the fall in a place where I didn't know anyone. So yeah, social networking sites definitely have enhanced my academic experience, and I don't see any reason for that to change in the near future.

~SK

Basically, what you've outlined here, by bringing unrelated, yet important facts together in one post, is the thinly-disguised framework of a dictatorship.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders if the Bush administration will willingly surrender power, especially if a Democrat is once again elected via the popular vote...

...and let us add one more fact to your collection: Detention Facilities are already set up to handle millions of people. Some of them are converted from military bases which were shut down.

Everything is gradually moving into place. Yes - we should be afraid, people. VERY AFRAID.

L

I am not an American. In fact my favorite thing about Americans is how easy you make it for the rest of us to make fun of you. That's a lot more fun than trying to deal with our own wacky problems. But writing like this, and the sentiments behind it, show why people should aspire to become Americans. (Except for the not being a fan of Firefly part. That's just crazy. :)

Keep up the misbehavin'

Thanks for this valuable post. As always, you're keeping your flist informed. I'm grateful.

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The Perfect Storm...

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Will there even BE a 2008 election?

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