If you thought SOPA and PIPA were bad, let us introduce you to their Big Brother, ACTA.

Just because SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) & PIPA (Protect IP Act) have been derailed (for the moment) in the US doesn’t mean the fight is over. The giant media corps that are behind that endeavor are global in scope, and are pushing their same agenda in the European Union, under legislation known as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has already been signed by several countries, poses a dangerous threat to the inherent freedom and openess of the Internet. Under ACTA, ISP’s and websites will be given more power to track what we do online, while forcing them to turn over our information and reporting our activity to the authorities — all in the name of copyright protection! Excessive copyright protection is a great tool for information suppression. Once technology and blocking techniques are in place, virtually all information is liable to filtering and suppression due to “copyright violation.” ACTA’s ill-conceived provisions will have chilling effects on free speech everywhere.

Read more on this, and then Sign The Petition calling for ACTA’s removal.

This is a good overview on this legislation from The Atlantic, “SOPA Stopped for Now, Anti-Censorship Activists Turn to ACTA”

Now that the armchair activists are doing victory laps, celebrating the (temporary) death of anti-piracy laws SOPA and PIPA in Congress, the years-long protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is getting nasty. Led by Poland, who currently holds the European Union Presidency, several European nations became the latest to sign the secretive treaty in a ceremony that took place in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday. The United States signed it last year.

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What the heck is ACTA anyways? And why is it so horrible?

Well, there are plenty of websites set up to explain the bill, not to mention plenty of explainers. The best we’ve read comes from the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco who’ve been waving a banner of protest against the agreement since it first appeared nearly six years ago. Their explainer is worth reading in full, but the section on why you should care about ACTA is worth quoting. It’s less about the measures proposed in ACTA, than it is about the secretive way the agreement was developed. Noting how “ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers, privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet” the EFF argues that “both civil society and developing countries are intentionally being excluded from these negotiations.” So if you’re still surprised that you’ve never heard of ACTA — even in the anti-SOPA pile-on protest that blacked out some of the world’s biggest websites last week — this is likely why.

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So if the most troubling element of ACTA is that it was largely developed behind closed doors, those doors are starting to swing open. Or rather the Internet is charging through them, and we’re sure that white-haired world leaders will have a hard time blocking them. Democracy is no longer something that happens at a ballot box, once a year. It’s a kinetic being, capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of citizens behind a cause and forcing decision-makers to rethink things. That’s one of those great things about the open Internet.

Read more Here

RT weighs in on this issue with its report: “ACTA, Secret Censor Tool Worse Than SOPA and PIPA”

As cyberspace turns its attention to the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, has been quietly signed or ratified by most of the developed world and is arguably the biggest threat to Internet freedom yet.

Read and Watch the complete report Here

And in case you’re not sure what the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) bills involve, and why they are such a threat to existing
internet freedoms, Watch This.

An open letter signed by many organizations, including Consumers International, EDRi (27 European civil rights and privacy NGOs), the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ASIC (French trade association for web 2.0 companies), and the Free Knowledge Institute (FKI), states that “the current draft of ACTA would profoundly restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of European citizens, most notably the freedom of expression and communication privacy.

Source: http://video.nixxon.net/~riesling/acta/?

An excellent interview with one of my favorite political figures, (now former) FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. This man is a hero when it comes to working to make for a more democratically-accountable, civically healthy society in this country. Unfortunately, its been an uphill, and often sisyphean battle.

Some of the most important points Copps makes in this discussion are in regards to the absolute essential need for having universal access to broadband internet technologies, and finding a way that these aren’t available only to some citizens, or to those who can ‘afford it.’ It is just as essential as rural electrification was to the country a century ago, in making the nation viable to compete and participate in the 21st Century world. His observations on the vital importance of real journalism in our society, and finding ways to make it work outside of the dying corporate business model for it, is also notable here. Copps was also an advocate and supporter of access television, and an ally in the work of the Alliance For Community Media.

Now the staunch supporter of an open internet and opponent of media consolidation has retired. In a wide-ranging discussion, he examines the FCC’s key accomplishments and failures of the past decade. Copps argues broadband is “the most opportunity-creating technology perhaps in the history of humankind,” and laments that the United States still lacks a national broadband infrastructure. Regarding the future of journalism, Copps calls on the FCC to make access to quality journalism a “national priority,” saying, “the future of our democracy hinges upon having an informed electorate.”

Copps: “[The internet] is the most opportunity-creating technology perhaps in the history of humankind. It is going to be something that helps us address every problem that is before the country. Every citizen has not only a right to this technology, but an urgent need to be able to obtain it. So, for eight years before the present administration, we were operating under the assumption that the market would get broadband out everywhere, even to those places where there was no reason for the market to go. This is the great infrastructure-building challenge of the early part of the 21st century. Just as throughout history we’ve had infrastructure challenges with roads and bridges and canals and railroads and highways and electricity and plain old telephone service, our challenge now is how to figure out how to get broadband to every American, no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular circumstances of the individual lives.”

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“We have to have a discussion in the United States of America if we’re going to move the town square of democracy to the internet and pave it with broadband bricks. How are we going to assure that it’s accessible to all, open to all, and not only can you type something and send it into the ether, but that you’re going to be heard, that you have some access to the conversation? That’s public interest. And there is public interest consideration on what the future of the internet is going to look like. There is a role, and we need to have a calm, cool, rational discussion about this very, very soon, or we’re going to lose the opportunity, really, to craft a media future that’s worthy of the country.

“And this goes back in history. The builders of this country have always been interested in creating information infrastructure. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison were presiding over this new experiment in democracy. And they knew that it hinged, this experiment, on an informed electorate. So they made sure, the writers of the First Amendment, they made sure that we had newspapers getting out to every American. They built post roads. The subsidized newspaper rates so that the news could get out. And that’s the kind of challenge we have to look at now. Our challenge in this century is the very same thing. The technologies change. Names change. The democratic - the small “d” democratic - challenge remains the same: make sure that electorate is informed, if you wish to sustain self-government.”

Watch The Video/Read The Transcript

We all-too-often hear shrill “the sky is falling” screeds being pushed in our national civic discourse, but in this case, such dire warnings are warranted. This video discusses the Senate version of the so-called “PROTECT IP Act,” but the House bill that was just introduced is much worse. It will give the government new powers to block Americans’ access websites that corporations don’t like. The“Stop Online Piracy Act”, or SOPA (HR 3261), could rip apart the open fabric of the Internet. People could see their websites disappear from the Internet for a “crime” as innocent as posting a video of themselves singing along to a favorite song. It paves the way for the sort of heavy-handed blocking tactics you’d expect to see in China, not the United States. This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. SOPA violates our right to free speech.

We need to act now to let our lawmakers know just how terrible this bill is. Please take a quick moment to let your lawmakers know that you oppose this legislation, by signing This Petition, as well as signing your name to Free Press’ petition letter Internet Censorship: Not Today, Not Tomorrow.

Learn more about this bill, who opposes it, and the serious ramifications for us all if it passes into law.

This video does a good job in explaining the importance of peer-to-peer communication for human rights work, and the momentous changes such technological capabilities harbor, as well as the challenges that they present. Commissioned by Global Partners & Associates, this short, well-produced animation piece looks at how these new technologies are affecting the way Human Rights and Freedom activists must approach rights and freedoms in the digital age.

Many insightful points in this post. Worth the read for anyone interested in where communication rights and freedom of information and of the press are going in our 21st century societies. It references the recently posted discussion by Greg Mitchell and Glenn Greenwald here on USTV Media. It is also notable for its insistence on art as a primary form of human communication, a point of view I have long shared.

In a representative democracy, it is vital for citizens to be vigilant and aware of the actions of their government and aware that they are free to speak. This is different from a monarchy where the authority comes from centralized throne of a King. The First Amendment was meant to bring a new balance of power between citizens and the government, particularly as a check on the executive branch. It gives ordinary people power to challenge the gap in power between those who are in a position of the official authority and the “governed” on the street. Those who govern are meant to be in service to the best interests of the general populace. It is therefore both a right and also a responsibility in a democracy for individuals to engage as watchdogs against abuse of power. The First Amendment as a whole is meant to safeguard that role, encouraging communication between citizens and governments to move toward dialogue rather than monologue.

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Journalists share the right of free speech and press with ordinary people as they themselves are citizens. Yet, they serve as a critical link as purveyors of mass communication. The press in its early form was simply the collective effort of individuals, aided by the technology of printing that gave power to multiply and distribute information faster and more effectively than any one individual alone. Though journalism is the only occupation explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, the journalist’s freedom to print is there to serve the citizen’s right to know and is not meant to take precedence over those citizens’ right to speak, have access to and utilize all organs of communication.

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Free speech as self-expression is a vital first step of any healthy communication. Yet, man does not exist in isolation. What is often not looked at is speech from the paradigm of the interdependent self. The meaning of speech is found in the communal ground because humans are inherently social beings and speech is only useful when there is common interest and active listening is involved. The capacity for dialogue where both parties are given space to freely express themselves with interest in the other is essential. True speech is founded on listening. It requires recognition of the other as an independent being. When one truly speaks, this act is based on the speaker’s listening into where the listener of their speech is coming from.

This vital connection between the act of speaking and listening is not often given its due. In modern days, speaking as an avenue toward ones own personal gain is emphasized. Speech that is not grounded in listening becomes indulging self-talk or animal roaring without higher meaning. Established media has not been listening to the public. This disrespect for citizens is seen in the act of engaging the public in tabloid drivel, lowering news reporting into trivial gossip. Citizens voices are not held to be worth listening to. What could be a conversation easily becomes a monologue, with information that is fed from top down.

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In today’s mass media, the spirit of freedom of speech is often lost. By not engaging in active listening and by serving the moneyed elites, many established journalists end up actually working against the true meaning of the First Amendment.

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In Guernica magazine article on April 29, 2008, [Julian] Assange posed an urgent question:

What does it mean when only those facts about the world with economic powers behind them can be heard, when the truth lays naked before the world and no one will be the first to speak without payment or subsidy? WikiLeaks’ unreported material is only the most visible wave on a black ocean of truth in draws of the fourth estate, waiting for a lobby to subsidize its revelation into a profitable endeavor.

Systems will not change from the top, but only when demand for that change comes from the bottom, through the actions of ordinary people. Before journalists start acting out of morals and speaking truth to power, they must first be reminded of their roots as citizens that share communal values.

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Speaking based on listening invites others into dialogue. For too long, establishment media has treated people as ignorant masses who passively receive information and become deaf to their community. Assange repeatedly spoke of how WikiLeaks is taking the First Amendment and giving it to the world.

The First Amendment was founded on the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Who are the people that were meant to be equal in this historical document? Is it to apply only to US citizens? For WikiLeaks, it means everyone in the world. WikiLeaks is a transnational organization. They listen to anonymous whistle-blowers, whose voices up to then have been increasingly denied. It is the publisher of last resort, carrying voices that yearn to be free regardless race and nationality.

Since its creation, the Declaration of Independence has been regarded by many as a universal, even divine document that has inspired millions. If the ideals in the Declaration are truly universal, it would be extended to everyone. WikiLeaks appears to be working to fill the gap between ideals and reality. They are showing through their actions how freedom of speech is everyone’s inherent right and not simply empty rhetoric.

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We are approaching the threshold of a great turning and are faced with a choice of the evolution or devolution of global society. A just and humane world depends on mankind’s ability to communicate in support of one another. It is speech in service to relationship and to listening that Savio saw as giving man meaning.

“WikiLeaks is the intelligence agency of the people.” They show how each can live up to the responsibility of the First Amendment. Exercising freedom of speech is taking responsibility for speaking as an act of listening. In the age of WikiLeaks, freedom of speech is not a professional privilege nor should it apply only to a particular nation or group of people. It is everyone’s right and responsibility. Each person’s act of free speech becomes a torch for a new civilization to come.

Read The Complete Post

This is an excellent discussion on the current state of media and journalism, and the importance of organizations such as WikiLeaks in providing the avenues for whistleblowing and leaks which are vital for effective muckraking journalism.

The comments by Glenn Greenwald starting around 50 minutes into this piece are particularly instructive.

This footage was made possible by my colleagues from the Alliance for Community Media, Walt Kosmowski of Beverly Community Access Media, and former BevCam director Rob McCausland.

As some friends and followers of UnCommon Sense TV Media have been aware of, I have been involved with developing an originally designed graduate program at the University of Dayton in Media, Communications and Human Rights. Trying to explain a program curriculum which has been created with no direct precedence at the university (and amongst very few elsewhere), can sometimes make attempts at more precise elaboration sometimes sound rather esoteric or confusing.

This short video does an excellent job in summing up the thesis of my work in only a few short minutes. Commissioned by Global Partners & Associates, it sums up the primacy of the issue of why new communication technologies are making networks of mediated communication the forefront of human rights issues today.

No efforts towards the sustenance and advancement of human rights can be considered serious if they do not incorporate the dimension of communication (and information) rights into the heart of their work.

So the corporations and the Pentagon are taking propaganda to a whole new level. The corrosive contempt for informed discourse through the process of the online sabotage of intelligent debate that this represents is really quite sick.

I first came across online astroturfing in 2002, when the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek. They had launched ferocious attacks, across several internet forums, against a scientist whose research suggested that Mexican corn had been widely contaminated by GM pollen.

Rowell and Matthews found that one of the messages Mary Murphy had sent came from a domain owned by the Bivings Group, a PR company specialising in internet lobbying. An article on the Bivings website explained that “there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly involved … Message boards, chat rooms, and listservs are a great way to anonymously monitor what is being said. Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party.”

The Bivings site also quoted a senior executive from the biotech corporation Monsanto, thanking the PR firm for its “outstanding work”. When a Bivings executive was challenged by Newsnight, he admitted that the “Mary Murphy” email was sent by someone “working for Bivings” or “clients using our services”. Rowell and Matthews then discovered that the IP address on Andura Smetacek’s messages was assigned to Monsanto’s headquarters in St Louis, Missouri. There’s a nice twist to this story. AstroTurf TM – real fake grass – was developed and patented by Monsanto.

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For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organised by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”. This is what he told them: “Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in ‘Liberal books’. I go through and I say ‘one star, one star, one star’. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in ‘Movies on healthcare’, I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click … If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.”

Read The Full Article In The Guardian

Plus, for more on this, read George Monbiot’s column Robot Wars. Disturbingly enlightening.

Every month more evidence piles up, suggesting that online comment threads and forums are being hijacked by people who aren’t what they seem to be. The anonymity of the web gives companies and governments golden opportunities to run astroturf operations: fake grassroots campaigns, which create the impression that large numbers of people are demanding or opposing particular policies. This deception is most likely to occur where the interests of companies or governments come into conflict with the interests of the public. For example, there’s a long history of tobacco companies creating astroturf groups to fight attempts to regulate them.

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After I last wrote about online astroturfing, in December, I was contacted by a whistleblower. He was part of a commercial team employed to infest internet forums and comment threads on behalf of corporate clients, promoting their causes and arguing with anyone who opposed them. Like the other members of the team, he posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression that there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments.

But it now seems that these operations are more widespread, more sophisticated and more automated than most of us had guessed. Emails obtained by political hackers from a US cyber-security firm called HB Gary Federal suggest that a remarkable technological armoury is being deployed to drown out the voices of real people.

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But perhaps the most disturbing revelation is this. The US Air Force has been tendering for companies to supply it with persona management software, which will perform the following tasks:…

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Software like this has the potential to destroy the internet as a forum for constructive debate. It makes a mockery of online democracy. Comment threads on issues with major commercial implications are already being wrecked by what look like armies of organised trolls – as you can often see on the Guardian’s sites. The internet is a wonderful gift, but it’s also a bonanza for corporate lobbyists, viral marketers and government spin doctors, who can operate in cyberspace without regulation, accountability or fear of detection.

Read The Full Post

A good interview with Amy Goodman, producer and host of Democracy Now!, talking about the role of the media and its vital importance as a means for promoting peace, justice, and human rights. This video was produced at the time of Goodman’s being honored with the World Association for Christian Communication’s (WACC) Peace Award.

“When you hear people speaking for themselves it breaks down barriers, it breaks down caricatures, it breaks down stereotypes…”

Watch Part Two of this interview