Nicollet.Net

Francis suggested the freedom.txt idea in early January. It’s catching on. I think this is a good idea, although I do not agree with the wording of the message, so here’s mine.

You might not understand what I am rambling about in the two sentences above. What is going on?

Until recently, humans were fairly similar to each other in terms of capabilities. If an individual decided to annoy, harass or harm others, their impact would be limited to what they could do on their own before being stopped, or they would have to convince enough people to help them. When you were a large organized group of people, you only had to care about other large organized groups of people.

Even with the advent of modern technology up to the 1980s, when two people in a stealth bomber could mash tens of thousands to a pulp by pressing a button, this was still the consequence of an industrial infrastructure allowed by a large organized group that willingly granted those two people such power.

Guns are a special case. An individual with a gun can do more damage than average, faster and without retaliation. What happened next is hardly surprising: some people decided to fight fire with fire and buy their own guns as a deterrent, while others decided that gun ownership — or rather, the increase in destructive power provided by guns — should be heavily regulated.

And then, computing and the internet happened. Owning an internet-connected general-purpose device is quite affordable these days.

And owning an internet-connected computer increases the capabilities of individuals by several orders of magnitude, as far as processing data and communicating with others is concerned. While computers are not as lethal as guns (tech support calls excluded), the increase in lethality provided by guns is much smaller than the increase in processing power and communication reach provided by computers. This is literally the first time that we, as a species, have to deal with some individuals having enough power to harm, disrupt or topple large organized groups.

A handful of people can harness the power of computing to send billions of spam messages, bring down entire web sites or networks or nuclear plants, make elite KGB spies green with envy, collect personal information about thousands of people, tell millions of people about a new law that mainstream media are silent about, or illegally distribute content without compensating its creators.

Is it any surprise that corporations, organizations and countries are fighting to regulate such incredible power?

You may not run software on iWhatever devices without consent from Apple. In France, you are legally responsible for when third parties commit crimes using your IP address. Various laws around the world including SOPA, PIPA and ACTA aim to provide counter-measures to illegal distribution of content. Germany and the UK are getting anal-retentive about what cookies you are allowed to send to your users.

And yet, there are immense benefits still to be reaped from a free, open, uncensored internet, and I am certain they far outweigh most of the costs involved. To willingly throw away those benefits in order to maintain existing business models and political habits strikes me as a very bad idea indeed, and one we should fight against.

Another alarming development is that the general public, lawmakers included, are woefully incompetent when it comes to computers and the internet. They do not understand why it works, and so they do not understand why actions they take might prevent it from working or what negative consequences. Laws are drafted and voted on without asking any experts for input, even when experts are quite outspoken against them.

And we, the experts, are the cause. We are dealing with people who thrive on communicating with the public — we are fairly good when it comes to communication, but only with each other. Is it any wonder that no one listens to us? We are so familiar with the details, nooks and crannies of our high-tech world that we fail to explain, in simple terms, why non-experts should care about these issues.

Why did it take something as critical as SOPA and PIPA to get us moving? Shouldn’t we be the ones leading the conversation on computers and the internet, instead of mumbling in our collective niche beards when clueless members of our parliaments speak of «series of tubes»? Could it be that we are so used to wielding awesome individual powers of communication, that we have forgotten how to team up to make our voices heard?