Web-sharing Blackout

Top internet sharing sites go black today amid controversy over proposed legislation they fear would inhibit users rights to upload or access free information.

 

According to the legislators working on PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), the bills aim to restrict access to foreign film and music pirating sites.

 

But Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit, Boing Boing and other popular sharing sites argue that the legislators drafted the bill with language that threatens free speech, and the way they do business.

 

The blackout and attached petitions to disable the legislation are intended to demonstrate the power and influence of these sites.

 

Whether or not the world comes to a grinding hault because we can’t see funny pictures of cats today, get crowd-sourced Wiki pages or search Craigslist-ings for whatever compels us, I want the Internet gurus to win.

 

They’re the ones who practice the unrestricted flow of information that some of the original Internet conceivers dreamt of (Remember the Whole Earth Catalog? It was about access to information, not property rights.), and as practitioners, they know the difference between what the legislation was intended to change and what it threatens to do instead.

 

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I see a threat to what makes the Internet special, and in a United States that constantly decries such censorship in places like China and Iran.

 

A global network of information serves to democratize us. It takes what public libraries do and multiplies it incredibly.

 

I’ve come to see the Internet as less an information superhighway and more of a global marketplace, and in more dramatic ways, an information universe in and of itself.

 

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “One cannot step twice in the same river,” about the flow of reality he saw. Buddhism and Western process philosophy share similar conceptions of the world around us.

 

I take the Internet as a perfect analogy for how the universe works this way. You can never click twice on the same Internet.

 

On a worldwide network with billions of users where uploading and downloading content never stops, it’s never the same as it was the last time you checked. And that’s not to mention facebook, which alone is constantly growing, so much so that by the time you check the latest status updates on the News Feed there are 12 more updates.

 

Our hunger for media Interactivity drives us onto the Web. It takes TV, books, newspapers, film, business, school, social life, political discourse and gives us a portal we can stuff in our pockets and puts us in control.

 

Interactivity is control. What has control given us? The best and worst. The Egyptian freedom fighters on one hand and porn addicts on the other. A crowd-sourced marketplace of competitive idea-sharing, and funny cat pictures.

 

But that’s free speech, and American law makers shouldn’t restrict access to it.