This is a guest-post from my room-mate, Daniel "LaToya" Mattox. He's a theorist/philosopher.
(edited by Jacob Kincaid)
The disappointment and rage I feel at the U.S. government at this time is unimaginable. I am not a politician or a free speech activist. I do not go to all the political rallys and protests that I should. I do not speak out against equally grievous injustices despite their frequency and my awareness. However, as a philosopher there is little I can do not to speak out against something that begins to dissolve the international marketplace of ideas.
There is nothing so precious in life as information.
The interconnected web of ideas and retorts which has become the internet stands as a light upon a hill to all of humanity. It is the key which will release us from our bonds and offer us to turn away from our shadows and echoes. The internet is not accessible to all people, but for those who do have access the internet offers a place where all ideas are met equally and each must be separately discerned. Credentials can be faked and no identity is so secure as to be trusted. All people stand anonymous and equal on the internet. The passing and enforcement of SOPA threatens to destroy this marketplace of ideas. It threatens to redistribute knowledge as it is crafted by the few and the powerful. As it is now, the internet is the only means of individual resistance. The diffusion of power throughout the structures of the postmodern world threatens to oppress, repress, and recreate knowledge as we know it.
Where knowledge is power it is also true that power is knowledge. If those with sufficient power begin to regulate and control the internet they will also begin to alter the public discourse. They will essentially break apart the global process that has occurred for years and culminated into websites such as Wikipedia and Google. If ever there were one thing that were needed in a republic, a rational society, or a world of free and rational agents it is the freedom of discourse.
Discourse may not always be equal but an anonymous outlet for the exchange of ideas and beliefs is close to an ideal. I will end here for the purpose of brevity, however, it should be known that there is no dollar public or private worth the sacrifice of free speech and the marketplace of ideas.
This comment is a bit late but I thought Daniel might appreciate that I have been discussing SOPA/PIPA and Internet freedom in general in my advanced English classes here. One of the girls in my class made me proud when she suggested that these bills weren't entirely about the companies getting their money from copyrighted media. Instead, it struck her as a ploy to control what types of media and information people have access to, thereby limiting their ability to consume at their own discretion and express themselves as they wish.
ReplyDelete