Emergent Morality #1 : Snapshots from the Frontline

Emergent Morality #1 being, “thou shalt not impede information flow”.

Various things have happened recently around the world… here’s a quick sampler:

1) On the back of the Tomlinson farce, this gem-of-juxtoposition dug up by none other than Chicken Yogurt, where a police medic (you know, the ones allegedly bottled by protesters in version #1 of the police story re: Tomlinson)… indulging in a spot of Job-Creation

At the same time that Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act theoretically makes it illegal to photograph the police.

We need to be able to photograph the police, because they keep breaking the law, and without OUR evidence, they get away with it.

2) Moldovan activist Natalia Morar has been charged for inciting a ‘Twitter Revolution’.

Twitter, YouTube and other social media continue to be an important tool for following this crisis. Posting from Chisinau, Twitter user 1arsz notes that opposition organizers are sending out the call to gather for a rally tomorrow on the capital’s main square.

The main IRL protest for the NZ Internet Blackout Campaign was organised via twitter – I was there. A good solid little protest with about 48 hours notice. Flashmobbing happens.

3) “You have this small set of guys that control every move you make,” he added. “If the actual internet had been controlled like this, we would still be in bulletin board mode.” – Joe Costello from Orb on the Phone Network Carrier’s death-lock on innovation.

With iPhone-generation devices looking like being a big part of the web-future… this… well, sucks. If you ever want to know what abandoned net-neutrality will look like, just take a look at the phone networks.

And this is a moral issue – personally I’m of the opinion that unfettered web access on any platform is a basic human right, and any corporation that gets in the way should be nationalised, broken up and resold – to whoever is willing to act in the service of the internet (aka Us) rather than screw every penny they can out of it by creating artificial toll-gates.

4) and on a lighter note, a bunch of lying conservative fucktards made an anti-gay marriage video, which loads of people have made parodies of, so said bigots have gone running to the DMCA and invoked Youtube’s highly dubious policy of “censor first, ask questions later”. They don’t have a leg to stand on because parody falls under fair-use provisions, but the censorship happens anyway so the internet reacts, and it blows up in their faces.

Not that religious people using the DMCA to censor youtube is anything new of course:

Which may not (you might think) have anything to do with any of the things that this blog is ostensibly about… but this new moral axis cuts to the heart of almost every old-world/new-world conflict that is happening today – and it’s not going to go away. Any organisation that depends on withholding information to make money or gain power (and that’s just about all of them), is going to get the carpet pulled from under it – probably within the next 20 years or so. The Entertainment Industries were simply the first.