Despite the fervor in certain circles of the Internet regarding the gestating online censorship bills — SOPA and PIPA in the House and Senate respectively — I’ve noticed astonishingly scant attention paid to the matter in the important forums. This negligence comes in a day and age when people in Oklahoma rile themselves over the name of a federal building in Oregon, when people in Illinois petition against public artwork in Georgia.
So where is the populist outrage when the offence concerns us all? Why is it that, for all our love of the Internet and the First Amendment, we have to be prodded into revolt?
Perhaps the vaguely technical nature of the bills puts people off. Or maybe we have too much acclimated to the post-9/11 freedom vacuum to quite feel the sting of our dissolving rights. I, for one, feel that obscure Congressional designations are the real culprit; it simply feels silly to get yourself upset over an acronym.
Though the bills are nominally on procedural hold, few Washington insiders would mistake the bills’ for dying or deceased, and already, the more cynical pundits speculate they are deliberately destined for the type of under-the-table ratification that hallmarked defense appropriations under the Bush administration. And already, the government has begun to take actions in the anti-piracy, pro-Hollywood spirit of the bills, most flagrantly visible in this week’s closure of MegaUpload and its subsidiaries.
The government clearly did not anticipate the consequences.
Whether more motivated by righteous patriotism or by reluctance to stream season five of “Californication” from elsewhere, the Internet responded with a barrage of attacks against the bill’s sponsors. Orchestrated primarily by Anonymous, the multitudinous id of the Internet’s libertarian consciousness, denial-of-service attacks soon disabled websites for the White House, the Justice Department and several of the bills’ corporate and industrial sponsors.
While damage and rubble from Internet skirmishes is easily cleared, the attacks left in their wake a number of transparent, well-articulated efforts to retaliate in more substantive ways.
The most rapidly growing among them is called “Black March,” an organized boycott of mainstream entertainment products during the month of March, which marks the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2012. If the industrial sponsors do not recognize the people’s opposition to the bills in the political channels, the reasoning goes, perhaps they will admit some discussion when their bottom lines are threatened.
“Do not buy a single record,” one Facebook page advises. For four weeks, “do not go to see a single film in cinemas. … Do not buy a DVD in stores. Do not buy a videogame. Do not buy a single book or magazine.”
Interestingly, the movement urges us to abstain from pirating content; if the entertainment industry cannot show illegal downloading to explain the drop in revenues, it cannot use such activity to advocate even louder for the bills’ necessity.
It is not certain how such a boycott might affect the landscape of the online censorship battle. Certainly, it will do more to bring the question closer to our public discourse. And it will likewise edify on the nature of Internet content and clear up some of the nebula of all the rights and artificial scarcities thereof.
But will people really perform the crucial action of the boycott’s intent: to make and solidify that connection between everyday commercial engagement and participation in censorship?
No matter how popular or well-organized the movement becomes, the crux of its success is necessarily personal; it needs a certain kind of individual before it can cultivate an effective group — quite the reverse of how Occupy Wall Street has (had?) regarded recruitment.
In this sense, the censorship debate has become a terribly interesting political affair. Against the same implacable enemies of old, genuine grassroots political behaviors have a credible chance to inflict some real pain and, perhaps, to effect real change.
- [box]The movement seeks to place a spotlight on brands that have so far sponsored censorship legislation behind the scenes. Among the worst offenders are
- Adidas
- Bose
- CBS
- Coach
- D&G
- Electronic Arts
- Fender
- Gibson
- L’Oreal
- NBC
- New Balance
- Nike
- Nintendo
- Peavey
- Ralph Lauren
- Revlon
- Sony
- Toshiba
- Wal-Mart
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