Trey Smith
As Greenwald shows in his writings again and again, the America we used to know no longer exists! While the voice and the power of the citizen always has been overstated, it now doesn't really exist at all. Even when we "win," we still end up losing at the end of the day.
Two events this week produced some serious cognitive dissonance. First, Congressional leaders sheepishly announced that they were withdrawing (at least for the time being) two bills heavily backed by the entertainment industry — the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House – in the wake of vocal online citizen protests (and, more significantly, coordinated opposition from the powerful Silicon Valley industry). Critics insisted that these bills were dangerous because they empowered the U.S. Government, based on mere accusations of piracy and copyright infringement, to shut down websites without any real due process. But just as the celebrations began over the saving of Internet Freedom, something else happened: the U.S. Justice Department not only indicted the owners of one of the world’s largest websites, the file-sharing site Megaupload, but also seized and shut down that site, and also seized or froze millions of dollars of its assets — all based on the unproved accusations, set forth in an indictment, that the site deliberately aided copyright infringement.
In other words, many SOPA opponents were confused and even shocked when they learned that the very power they feared the most in that bill — the power of the U.S. Government to seize and shut down websites based solely on accusations, with no trial — is a power the U.S. Government already possesses and, obviously, is willing and able to exercise even against the world’s largest sites.
~ from Two Lessons from the Megaupload Seizure by Glenn Greenwald ~
Those who are now celebrating the supposed defeat of the proposed Keystone (XL) Pipeline should keep this in mind. While many have applauded the Obama administration for denying the application after intense public opposition, I won't be surprised in the least if we learn, sometime in the next 12 months or so, that the proposal is going forward under a different guise. When the elites decide that they want something, they always seem to figure out a way to bring it to fruition, public opposition or law be damned!
Whether we make our voices known through public comment, testifying before governmental bodies, protests OR the act of voting, the powers that be rarely pay much of any attention to what we really think and ONLY do so when they have manipulated us to think as they do.
Of all the various farces employed to fool the populace into believing we have any modicum of control, voting is probably the worst. As Bruce A. Dixon, Managing Editor of the Black Agenda Report, writes:
Your vote really is your voice, and in the modern era, every government on earth claims to rule with the consent of the people. This bestows upon the vote a unique kind of legal and symbolic power. The gap, however, between this legal, this symbolic power of the vote and any real ability to change things for the better is a vast one. The authorities rightly fear the people's voice, and so have contrived law and custom to ensure that we are seldom heard and almost never heeded.The truth of the matter is that the American people already are bound and shackled...but most folks haven't figured it out yet!
They would never dream of allowing us to vote on the price of gas, food, housing, credit or college tuition. But they don't mind at all letting us choose between corporate-funded Republicans and corporate-funded Democrats. The powers that rule our economy, our media and our politics won't let us vote on whether to bring the troops home from 140 countries and the seven seas, or whether to continue spending more on weapons of death and destruction than the other 95% of humanity combined. But they will let us choose between an ignorant, crazy or racist Republican who promises to give banksters, polluters and corporate criminals a free pass, and a sane, smart, level-headed free market liberal Democrat who does exactly the same thing, no matter what he promised.
The authorities won't let us vote on whether the broadcast spectrum should be privatized, whether we should have the right to start and join unions, whether to create millions of good-paying green jobs. They won't allow voters to decide whether corporations deserve more rights than flesh and blood people, or whether the president should be able to kidnap, torture, imprison and murder people without trials or even charges. But they will let us choose between a white guy and a black guy. As long as it's their white guy, and their black one as well.
This imposition of false and meaningless choices is how, in these United States, our voices are suppressed, our votes wasted and made irrelevant, with the black vote rendered most irrelevant of all.
I agree with most of what you have said, and also feel strongly as an international citizen, about the prospect of foul play.
ReplyDeleteThere is a very important legal distinction here though. The paper you cited overexaggerates the power of the U.S. on two grounds. Firstly, the U.S. government does not have the power to switch off a domain, or to block it/deregister it. Secondly, the reason why Megaupload went offline wasn't because the domain was seized, which is what is proposed in SOPA, but because the servers were seized as evidence.
From what I've read in the case, the evidence that Megaupload was involved in online piracy stems from the fact that they were not willing to cooperate with the authorities in creating safeguards to piracy, such as responding to violations raised by IP holders and creating ways to sanction continued use of Megaupload for piracy. I can use Rapidshare, a competitor, as an example of what I mean. Rapidshare was nearly forced to close in 2008 because they argued that it was not their responsibility to create safeguards - unfortunately, one must establish something in law before acting on the basis that is has been established. Rapidshare settled on the basis that it created an MD5 upload auditing system, that removed files with certain properties immediately, or files which were seen to continuously impeach IP rights. Further, they created a complaints process for IP holders.
The reason why Megaupload could reasonably have their servers seized is because there was evidence in the nature of not cooperating to the extent of Rapidshare, that they were intentionally supporting infringement as a business, by the nature of their business.
A further application here, is consider Wikipedia - on their article about Dick Cheney, they used information about his indictment in the House of Representatives which was blacked out from the media because of its controversiality. However, Wikipedia could keep this on their website without question, even though it could potentially defame a politician of great standing, and though whoever wrote it obtained the information illegally from secret documents. In this matter, Wikipedia works on the basis of freedom of speech, nobody committed a crime as part of the process of using Wikipedia and it was the course of truth. It could be said that this was lawful.
Megaupload was opposite to this, and so it was on the basis of evidence in this way that their servers were seized, which brought their site offline. The indictment in the US itself was not sufficient to take a site offline. I'll give you a clear picture of what an indictment can do. I submitted an indictment against a police officer for closing a serious assault case after neglecting evidence intentionally, as was later proven in court. The indictment only brought about the opportunity to submit evidence as part of a fair process, it did not stop that officer from working, and did not mean that I had an automatic right to obtain evidence, I had to get a court order each time. This was the process in New Zealand against Megaupload.
Whilst I maintain that there business was probably lawful, and that filesharing sites are targetted by IP holders, Megaupload didn't fulfil its duty as a business to help prevent and detect crime according to advice - this is why they were indicted and to that extent I agree with the indictment. I don't think it's fair however that their legitimate operations should be included in the closure and that the business should continue to operate, its just a shame that they did so previously in a way that could justify they were engaging in criminal activities.
Here's what I don't understand. The business operated out of New Zealand, so why didn't the Kiwis indict them for a crime? Why does the US act like the world's police force?
ReplyDeleteAlso, there have been numerous instances over the past few years of foreign nations bringing indictments against US citizens and corporations, yet the US gov't rarely participates in handing them over. But when we bring the indictments, we expect other countries to play along.
That's a very good point - the US does seem to use its power as a nation to influence international law. Gary McKinnon is a fine example of just that.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that many governments settle for unilateral extradition treaties - the UK is a great example of that as well. At one point in the UKUSA Act, we did not have to power to extradite US citizens at all and the UK did not have the power to appeal any request to extradite a UK citizen, so the US could do so without much resistance until 2007.
With regards to New Zealand, from the perspective of international law, they cannot indict their own citizen for a crime against a foreign national or a foreign organisation unless it leads to a crime against a local person or organisation that there is a remedy provided for under common law. So in this case it was a US IP holder, and therefore a foreign organisation. Even though this organisation would have had a local branch in New Zealand, a public prosecutor can only proceed if it is in the public's interest. Since the IP matter is not a wider concern for the whole public, it cannot be said that it is in the public interest to prosecute, rather it would be a private prosecution from a private indictment by the IP holder, which is why it came from them and not authorities in New Zealand. It's all quite interesting stuff.