You need to understand what we are up against, not to fear but to know how to fight.
As noted yesterday, political agitation in meat space simply invites the attention of those who have no honor. Don’t get lost in the details of having good people involved in a bad organization; we aren’t fighting people in that sense. We are fighting something that uses the people. The forces behind this are indistinguishable from demons, in that they seek to crush divine justice.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the TPP — Trans-Pacific Partnership. It’s a trade agreement. It’s the same old crap we’ve seen before: Plutocrat interests served against the average consumer all the way. So it’s no surprise that there is a portion devoted to protecting the copyrighted content holders. There’s also no surprise it’s being negotiated in secret, with a high degree of leverage on Congress to pass it without even reading it.
That is all likely to happen — if not this time, then next time. Don’t be surprised by that; don’t rant and rave as if anything we think about it matters to those pushing this thing.
Don’t forget, these people are under the guidance of demons. It’s not as if we give a rat’s butt about their mind-twisting entertainment. If you like that crap, you aren’t interested in much of what I have to say in the first place. The system works for you, so keep your eyes on the dancing pixels and your ears filled with crappy noise sold as music. You are already in service to the evil system.
It matters because this same type of leverage has already been used to silence people producing their own unique material under the proper open release ethics. They will use that same legal power to silence dissent, nay, to silence even factual observations about their activities. They will use this TPP to prevent us even writing about the TPP.
Not that it would make any difference.
Let’s review what I’ve already said about this (chase those links if you don’t understand). If your enforcement is unjust, the law you enforce is unjust. If the only way to enforce copyright results in violations of biblical morality, then copyright is to be treated as unjust in itself. I am here to tell you as a prophet of Almighty God that IP enforcement is unjust. Remember Aaron Swartz? He’s a symbol of what’s wrong with IP laws. I’m not a member of the Open Access Guerrilla movement, but I wish them well. They remain too Western in their philosophical orientation, so they don’t quite lay hold of God’s truth. The movement may some day morph into something better, but for now it suffers a major strategic weakness. The point is this: The moment any resource becomes digital, it belongs to the virtual world. Copyright means nothing in virtual space; attempts to force those laws on virtual space is poking God in the eye.
Do you simply have to have Windows 7? Sure, I can help you get it, all free and legal. MS doesn’t like it, but the means to bypass activation are totally legal. It’s just that the information is very obscure. You want Windows 8? You aren’t too bright and helping you would be too risky. I can help you get MS Office in several versions, too, but that’s more a matter of knowing where to look on the Net. The only reason people still demand that stuff is sheer social and corporate inertia. But the point is this: So-called software piracy isn’t a moral issue in God’s eyes, just a tactical issue. Got a copy of something people like? Feel free to share it, just be wise about it. The laws about it are evil, as are the underlying economic assumptions.
Meanwhile, all the way down to my bones I sense a day coming when that inertia is overcome. I have no idea what it will look like, but at some point in the near future people will be clamoring for something that offers much more openness along with better security. I’m not going to tell you Linux is the ultimate good; Linux is the closest you can get to Windows but sucks less. In many cases it can be easier to install and works better on a far wider range of hardware these days. I’ve had serious trouble in the past couple of years with Win7 on some hardware, but Linux works fine on the same machine. Yes, it means learning a new way to do things, but there are thousands of folks on the Net eagerly waiting to help you figure it out. I am one of them.
The plutocrats hope you don’t discover Linux and the Open Source world. If they could, they would make it illegal for you to run any software that didn’t have a back door for them to enter at will. Just using Linux is a threat to them, never mind the more obvious facts that they can’t compel Linux developers to leave back doors in the software and can’t prevent the development of technology that bypasses all their draconian controls. They can’t imagine that I don’t really want much from their controlled assets, but they fear deeply my ability to process digital copies of those assets with full freedom using Open Source software that ignores their silly technology controls.
Tactical advice: I recommend trying to get a laptop with wifi and installing some version of Linux. Or simply learn how to use a run-from-CD version, something like Knoppix. Be ready to operate from open wifi access points for some of this stuff, if you intend to get involved. Don’t be surprised if some of the most mundane activity requires playing that game. Just writing poetry and posting to a site could someday be “terrorism” in the eyes of the authorities.
Open Source and Open Access are inherent in the virtual world and will simply be a basic assumption of the Network Age.
