I don’t know how many times I have to go on about it, but the way digital law is shaping up in the Twenty-First Century is pretty scary. It’s really not difficult to explain why it’s so stupid, either: we are basically looking at a world of outsourced law enforcement, with the enforcement put in the hands of one of the interested parties. Does that need any more explanation as to why it is so hilariously, surreally idiotic?
The other aspect, of course, is that with this outsourcing the law is effectively being policed on the landscape of corporations’ terms and conditions, with no semblance of due process, and no obligation to their customer whatsoever. This means that if Virgin Media decide to disconnect me from the internet because they have received complaints about illegal downloading of copyright material on my account they can do so and I have no recourse – they can of course choose to provide their service to whomever they choose. However, given my whole business entirely depends on access to the internet, I’d like to be pretty fucking certain they made some effort to establish the veracity of any accusations they used as a basis for depriving me of it.
Similarly with blogs, of course. Scottish music blog The Pop Cop was recently summarily deleted by Google on the basis of duplicated and factually inaccurate accusations of copyright violations. The way the Digital Milennium Copyright Act works (and believe me, our own Digital Economy Bill is worse) the accusers are immune from punishment for making fallacious accusations. Also, Google is immune from prosecution if it simply removes the material in question, irrespective of whether or not the accusations have any merit. And the person whose work is subsequently vandalised has absolutely no legal comeback whatsoever precisely because the DMCA law is specifically designed to remove actual law enforcement bodies from the process of enforcing the law and putting it into the hands of massive companies with a major vested interest in the dispute itself. Surely absolutely any lawyer in the land would laugh their arse off at anything so obviously corrupt.
So the Pop Cop was removed for attracting repeated, and inaccurate accusations of copyright infringement despite never having the opportunity to point out that these accusations had no merit. This is guilt by accusation, new internet laws are full of it, and it is a seriously important problem for our law-enforcement because suddenly all concepts of right to due process of law and the assumption of innocence have been swept away, all because a few major media companies are terrified of the internet and too lazy to innovate to engage with it. This has very far-reaching social implications indeed and we should all be strongly aware of what it represents: major companies want the right to punish us outside of the law whenever they see fit, and without consequences for themselves. That is fucking scary.
And let’s be honest, this is not about deleting some fourteen-year-old’s diary (although that might actually attract more sympathy and highlight the act of cultural vandalism being perpetrated here) this is three years of actual work supporting the music industry of Scotland – the very thing he is being attacked for undermining. This is the bit that is just fucking ridiculous. Labels like mine do not have access to the BBC, we don’t have access to Q or the NME and we can’t get our bands on Jools Holland or the bill at Reading, and we can’t afford to fly them to the States to do a tour, so independent, not-for-profit bloggers and podcasters are the lifeblood of our business model. Without the opportunity to reach a wider audience which these sites represent we have no way of getting our artists’ music out there, and we are fucked*. You are not ‘protecting music’ by silencing its most passionate champions, you are doing just as much harm as the people who you think you’re fighting, if not more.
Imagine if someone accused a painter of copying a few of their pictures. You might investigate their work to see if the accusation held water, and you might perhaps force them to acknowledge the debt to the other painter, and you might even compel them to hand over a percentage of the profits they made from that particular work. What you would not do is turn your back and allow the accusing party to go to their house and destroy every single one of their other paintings on the assumption that they wouldn’t make such an accusation if it were without merit. And yet, because this is the internet, that is considered acceptable, because let’s be honest this is exactly what has happened to Jason.
Now Google are partly to blame here, but only partly. I have no idea why multiple complaints has to trigger the deletion of a blog rather than a review with the owner of precisely what the situation is, although I presume that simple man-hours would be the barrier. But if you think that spending a couple of hours of your time establishing whether or not someone is a criminal is not something you can be arsed with, then you have serious problems. It is not hard at all to establish the motives of a music blogger – it is usually obvious within the first post or two.
The wider issue here is one of the law, and the way it is being written at the moment. Currently almost every single law being written in the internet space is copied and pasted from the wish lists of major corporations whose sole desire is to ring-fence their vested commercial interests. Politicians are going to have to get pretty fucking savvy pretty fucking quickly because they are having rings run around them at the moment, and we are staring down the barrel of some of the most cock-eyed, store-bought legal travesties in recent history.
There is a Facebook group here which you can join to support Jason and help pressure Google into giving his site back, and it would be hugely appreciated if you could email support@blogger.com and tell them what you think.
*Of course, the major labels will be more than happy with that, as the fewer independent channels available the more they can own the ones which are left, and the fewer independent record labels starting up and building an audience, the less competition they have, and they are thus protected from the annoyance of having to improve their product to remain competitive. I am not entirely convinced, however, that lazy companies should be able to use the law to reinforce what now essentially becomes a cartel, and immunise themselves against having to compete in a free market.
Having spent the week driving Loch Lomond around the country I figured that some sort of driving-themed nonsense would be in order for this week’s podcast.
