Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/11/free-expression-v-big-content.html
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I really hope this goes down tomorrow hard enough that it can’t crawl back out of the muck and terrorize us again in coming months/years.
However, if we are truly in the darkest timeline and it passes, and “anyone” has the power to mass-censor the internet, and the whole thing becomes a dumpster fire of suppression…
… this is just a half-formed thought rising up from the back of my mind, and I’m certain it’s going to come out wrong no matter how many times I twist it, turn it and attempt to frame it better… but here I go:
Will we be worse off than we were in the days before the internet?
I mean, yes, obviously in so many ways we will, particularly when it comes to the dissemination of news, information and art. It will get mighty nasty. But there was life before the internet. Sure, it was the ’80s, so it wasn’t a great life, but it was possible to muddle through.
We will have had the thing and then lost the thing, which always sucks. But that loss creates a longing, and the longing creates drive.
There will be the memory of how the internet was; an entire generation that grew up with the internet who will be replacing the short-sighted and/or corrupt politicians that killed the thing they loved. A generation who knew what the internet was like before it was ruined. Who can work toward subverting this folly and creating a new form of “internet” that we haven’t even thought of at this point in time; something that sidesteps these rules and regulations.
Or. You know. Not.
It just seems that no matter how many times people shout that the sky is falling, for good or bad, we still have a sky. It may not be the sky we wanted, but it’s still there.
I also have hope that if it passes it proves to be so untenable that it collapses under its own stupidity while forever besmirching the reputations of those that proposed it, drafted it and supported it. Fingers crossed.
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That said, it’s important to note that the advocates for this plan rejected all proposals to punish people who fraudulently claimed copyright in works they didn’t own: measures from fines to being excluded from making future copyright claims were rejected out of hand.
Ideal! Now every word they utter must be added to the filter.
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Can anybody anywhere add to the blocklist? I’m down to participate in a massive online protest through use of the system.
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