As more of our economy is pulled in under the corporate and government controls, we risk a form of utterly heedless oppression. It’s called fascism — government operating on behalf the soulless corporation. We have gotten to the point the two are hardly distinguishable.
So when the FCC says it wants more say over the Internet, and the courts look askance at such a thing, we should not imagine either the courts or the FCC are looking after out best interests. What appears to be a very good thing by the FCC slapping Comcast for something which every technician knows constitutes a violation of the open protocols which make the Net possible, is probably a set up. Let’s face it: Comcast lied outright about this business of throttling BitTorrent connections. That should be a crime if it’s not, but this will surely be the lever government uses to throttle free speech.
The World of Ends is going away, in one sense. More and more of the Net is owned by corporations. They will be held back by the geek gatekeepers, but for how long? We already know the current ruling regime intends to shut down all dissent, even if oh-so carefully to prevent appearing to do so.
This matters to me because the Net is my primary outlet right now. I have a message, and a mandate from God to share what He has given me, to participate in His revelation. But for now, I have a tiny audience for that message. When I write about Linux, I get tons of hits. When I write about mysticism and faith, I get almost none. I’m not subject to much overt monitoring right now, and certainly precious little interference, because I’m not making enough noise in the sense that it would draw attention from anyone, good or bad.
At the same time, it is wholly unlikely I would try to hide behind pseudonyms and proxies. I take no effort to hide the pertinent facts about my existence, nor about what I teach. I’ve never hidden my contempt for the US government, as well as every other Western government. I’ll say it again: Not a single government in the modern world, as far as I can determine, is legitimate in the eyes of God. As a matter of conscience, I proclaim all who follow Jesus are free to disobey anything which hampers their calling from God. As long as your conscience is clean before Him, do what you must. It will not be counted against you as sin.
But the underlying assumptions are not to pick a fight with anyone. We don’t have a crusade to tear down any human government, but we ignore them all. Not blithely and stupidly, but wise as serpents and harmless as doves, in the final analysis we discount the worldly consequences as a part of the Cross. I can’t predict if those consequences will include a need for seeking ways to bypass all the Net controls planned and plotted against common users. As I survey the situation, I realize so long as God sees fit to keep me in the background, it simply means I don’t have to sweat learning more about networking and clandestine communications; I don’t have to worry about a bunch of off-shore shell accounts or whatever.
Yet.
