SOPA and PIPA

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As a citizen of the Internet, I assume you’re aware of SOPA/PIPA.  It looks as if both houses of Congress have tabled the original versions of the legislation (largely because of the huge anti-SOPA/PIPA movement here on the Net), and are rewriting them to be more specific.

 

 

I am uninformed, and can only tell you my feelings on these pieces of legislation.

 

 

Very simply: I was alarmed by them. 

 

 

Supposedly they were all about stopping piracy, and that’s fine.  But the corporations pushing the legislation were playing a double game: they were pretending that it was all about cracking down on websites (mostly outside the USA) that illegally distribute movies and music and such, while they were really thinking of the law’s very real application within the USA as well.

 

 

Did you notice the word “corporations” in the above paragraph?

 

 

Exactly.

 

 

“Piracy” can be very broadly defined.  “Piracy” could be something as innocent as a Tumblr blogger posting Disney images.  “Piracy” could be posting a link to a song you like, or a video clip. 

 

 

Which means that almost all of us out here posting our favorite quotes and links and clips on our blogs and on Facebook are pirates!

 

 

Not so, not so, croon the pro-legislation people.  We’re only after the real pirates.  David Pogue, who alternates between intelligence and toadydom, decided that the Google / Wikipedia approach – to black out their websites in protest – was an overreaction, and that they were siding with the pirates.

 

 

Well, yes, David, they were.  This is because we are all part of a big incestuous system called the Internet, and it’s all about trading information.  And Google, and Wikipedia, and all the rest, were perfectly aware that, once the legislation was in place, it would not be used merely to go after Swedish and Korean and Russian sites, but to go after sites here in the USA too.  Sites like mine and yours and everyone's.

 

 

How much of a pirate am I?  Not very much.  Last summer I watched the “Thor” preview on a probably-pirate Russian website, but – hey – a two-minute trailer?  If I go to Hell, or prison, it will not be for that particular transgression.  And sometimes I scoop up images to use in my blogs or on Facebook, and I do not always inquire about their copyrights.  And sometimes I quote books and poems and all kinds of things, and I do not add complete copyright information (though I try hard to credit the authors).

 

 

But I suspect that I too would be in violation at some point down the road if SOPA/PIPA in their original forms were enacted.

 

 

Because that’s what corporations do.  They restrict access. 

 

 

The Internet is a zoo. I love the depictions of it on shows like “Futurama” and “The Simpsons,” with people actually entering it as if it were a place, flying around among buildings marked GOOGLE and FACEBOOK and ONLINE GAMBLING and NAPSTER.  And that’s exactly what it's like. 

 

 

Frankly, it has always seemed to me that I have the right to share media with my friends.  It’s like handing a newspaper or magazine to another person so that they can read something.  I paid for it; am I the only person who can read it?  Really?  And how exactly are you going to enforce that?

 

 

I didn’t call my congressmen this time.  But if this legislation comes up again, in anything like its current form, I will.

 

 

So there, David Pogue.

 

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Private I

 

     

 

If you've never Googled yourself, you really should.

 

I know, I know, the ultimate narcissism.  But if, like me, you've fallen prey to the temptation, you'll understand what I mean.

 

My name, incidentally, is Loren Williams.  Very common last name, relatively uncommon first name.  How many of us could there be?

 

There are quite a few of us, actually.  There's a professor at Georgia Tech; a guy in upstate New York who is apparently one of the great authorities on tying fishing flies; a volunteer fire chief in Cosmopolis, Washington; a car enthusiast in Florida; a pharmacist in Montreal (this one's a woman); and my personal favorite, a linebacker (to be fair, this one is "Lorenzo," not "Loren.").  And a host of others.  (Sadly, the only one who shares my middle initial is a real-estate con man in Maryland who's in jail for a pretty nasty crime.)

 

I'm in there too, but only peripherally, though my place of business.  I don't come up until about the fourth or fifth page of Google results.  Same for Google Images; lots of other people (the Georgia Tech guy shows up a lot, he's very photogenic), and you'll see a lot of closeups of trout flies (see previous paragraph).  My photo - the one that I use for my profile, the dark jacket and plastic fruit necklace - doesn't come up until Page Nine.

 

My point here is that all of us have a life on the Web, whether we know it or not.  Websites like Facebook and Twitter allow us to create personae; we choose images, salient details about ourselves, and we present ourselves to the world.  (Not for nothing, the word "persona" originally meant a mask worn by an actor during performance.)  There was a great piece in the Times a few weeks ago about how Twitter allows us to construct a kind of photomosaic of ourselves, by dropping fine-tuned comments about ourselves throughout the day.  I'm at my kid's school play: see, I'm a good parent.  I'm reading the Aeneid for the fifth time: my, I'm smart!  I'm weeping while watching the Glee finale: I'm terribly sensitive, but in tune with pop culture.  And so on.

 

But there's all kinds of stuff seeping around the edges.  There are the items you've bought and sold on eBay, using the same old username.  The unflattering party photo someone shared on Flickr.  The political argument you had on some forgotten discussion board.  It survives, and it can reappear at the oddest times.  And you can't really control it.

 

(Side story: an old friend just joined Facebook two weeks ago.  It was great to see him there.  Then, one morning, I noticed one of those ugly misspelled postings under his name and thought Uh-oh, he got hacked.  He was pretty upset by it, and quit Facebook on the spot.  I don't blame him, but I sort of wish I'd warned him not to click on every shiny button in the Facebook galaxy.  But then again, I thought he knew . . . )

 

Katie, a reader of this blog, suggested "privacy" as a topic, and the way our public and private lives are blending together.  I think it's a great topic.  Sometimes I think my most private moments are when I'm walking down the street in downtown Providence, completely out in the open, but completely anonymous.  No one looks at me twice.  When I'm online, on the other hands, I'm not private at all; I may as well be painted red and jumping up and down.

 

I actually thought twice about telling all of you my full name above, but decided that all you nice folks would be able to handle the info.  Then I thought: What does it matter?  Who cares?

 

When we're online, we make these decisions all the time: sharing personal info, phone number, name, employer, images, all kinds of stuff.  And we generally shrug and keep typing.

 

For all you know, maybe I am that guy who ties trout flies.