As the topic together with the above suggests I've been thinking a bit about democracy, freedom of speech, personal integrity and of course file sharing lately. Since I live in Sweden there has been quite a lot about this in the news for the past 6 months or so. It started with FRA, or the National Defence Radio Establishment in Swedish, being allowed to monitor all communication through cables that passes the boarder of Sweden. Pretty much all communication in Sweden passes the boarder of Sweden at least once on it's way to it's destination so FRA basically was allowed to listen in on all Swedes no matter whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not. This was introduced on the 18th of June 2008, since then there has been a lot written about this and there are still people working against this law (great site for information about this, unfortunately only in Swedish, stoppaFRAlagen).
While discussing this and living in Sweden it's impossible to not mention The Pirate Bay. During the end of February the case against TPB was finally brought up in court and tomorrow (17th of April) the verdict will be delivered. I suppose most people, including myself, aren't all that interested in what the verdict will be as, at least, I'm sure this case will go through all the courts all the way up to the Supreme court of Sweden before it's settled. I'm no lawyer but for all I know it might even reach the EU court before it's over and done with.
Now you might wonder what this has to do with the future of internet. Well it has to do with the power of the corporations and the fact that some of these laws goes totally against what all we Swedes know about right and justice. Because while most of us (at least I think most of us, I don't have any numbers to point at as there are none that are scientific enough to point at as far as I know) agree that breaching the copyright law is wrong, we don't think that it's all ok for private interests or the government to have absolute power over our internet activities. Which I believe to be one of the main reasons TPB has recieved so much support and also one of the reasons why some people has started using TPB recently.
Two acronyms make me shiver every time I see them, IPRED and ACTA. Both of these has been pushed upon us by private interests wanting to protect their products and politicians both in the EU and in most of the western world seem to just give in to the demands and quite frankly I can only see one reason for them to do so and it's the usual one ... money. And to put the final nail in the democracy coffin we have the EU directive about storing of data, which of course also has seen a lot of backing from private interests across the pond. So in Sweden we now have a military organisation monitoring every move we make electronically and soon our service providers will also be forced to store every 1 and 0 we produce over a 12 month period (I believe the directive says 6-24 months and it's up to each country how long to store it, Sweden opted for 12 months).
I don't know how you define democracy but Wikipedia states
Even though there is no universally accepted definition of 'democracy', there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all members of the society (citizens) have equal access to power and the second that all members (citizens) enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.Equal access to power and enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties? As far as I know companies aren't citizens so I guess we still live in a democracy then. Sarcasm aside I personally believe access to internet is one of these freedoms and liberties that is mentioned above. Sure it might not be a universally recognized human right to have internet access but then in most of the western world everybody that want to have internet access can have it and in countries like Sweden many parts of the government take for granted that you have access to internet since if you don't it's pretty much impossible to communicate with them. So even though it doesn't say so in UN's universal declaration of human rights I still believe it to be one, at least if you live in the modern industrialized world. One I do believe in there though is the ability to freely say what you think without being afraid of prosecution. Monitoring everything we say (or do electronically) isn't really the best way to make sure we don't feel afraid of prosecution.
I guess I've made my point about democracy and the new laws and regulations now. Well maybe I should point out one more thing. In Sweden the new laws means that it's up to the accused to prove his or her innocence in the case anybody is accused for a breach against the copyright law, something that is totally unheard of in Swedish justice. Or wait a second, if you go back to the middle ages and look at the witch-trials you might find a similar way of prosecuting, at least according to André Rickardsson who used to work for SÄPO (Swedish Security Service) and today as an IT security expert at Bitsec. This is of course also the reason why I had to mention TPB earlier and the whole filesharing business at all as this is exactly what makes the big business happy when they try to get to people that may or may not breach the copyright law.
But on towards my point of this whole post. The future of the internet. Currently there is a new directive being pondered over in Brussels, it's an updated version of the Telecommunication law and again the lobyists from across the pond show up and push their agenda on the politicians that again seem to eat it all up. Of course we have lobyists from this side of the pond too that also want to see a better copyright protection. But the main issue here is whether we should let the internet be free and let anybody do what ever they want on there or whether we should control who and what has access to the internet. Of course crime should always be fought but in most countries in the EU we already have both laws in place to control this and police units specially trained to fight these crimes (be it computer crime or child pornography or what ever). Had the citizens pushed the government to fight copyright infringments I'm sure they would have marked money in their budgets for just that. What has been done in Sweden when these kind of problems has shown up earlier has been to simply add a tax on products used to copy copyrighted material and give that money to the copyright holder. So was done with cassettes as an example and there are several people that think that the best solution to the current internet piracy problem is to just add a tax on broadband to cover any losses the copyright industry might get from piracy. Problem there is that the big companies aren't the least intrested in this as it wouldn't give them the money but the money would end up in the pockets of the musicians, authors, script writers or what ever. It would also break the control the large corperations have over the market.
As you might realize by now I'm not very fond of the effect that the private businesses has on our politicians. Which is also something I believe will form how internet and internet access looks in the future. I'm sure that if the entertainment industry got their say all the way everybody that used the internet would have to pay them for just plain access first and then we'd also have to pay each time we wanted to listen to a song, read a book, watch a film or what ever. Any amateur content would be blocked as they wouldn't get a dime for something somebody without a contract with them made. Is that the kind of internet we want? An internet fully controlled by big business and the government, a web where we can't say what we think without the risk of being prosecuted for slander or undemocratic views?
Personally I view the internet a bit like a view our road network. They are both infrastructure used by a lot of people and in most cases we are still allowed to do what ever we want on them as long as it isn't a crime. In some cases we might need a special permission to do something on our roads and everybody is fine with that. So why not introduce a licens if you want to have a 100/100 Mbit connection, since after all you only need one if you want to download and upload large amount of data. But at the same time allow anybody with a 10/10 Mbit connection (10/10 since that allows you to use services like YouTube and the like with high quality) to do what ever they want within reason as that would be equalent of a pedestrian on a road. You could add to the licens that you allow the government to monitor your traffic same as is done by the police on our roads.
Just a suggestion and one that I think is reasonable. I do however think it's unreasonable to have a camera and microphone monitoring everybody everywhere, whether it's on the street, in their home or in the middle of the forest. That screams end of democracy to me and to see our politicians stand around talking about democracy and then classify negotiations about laws that has absolutely nothing to do with relations to foreign powers (CNET's story regarding this). Again something that is pretty much unheard of in Sweden, especially since this treaty has nothing to do with foreign powers or national security but all to do with copryright laws and big business.
And lastly a final example of what the monitoring of all communication can lead to. Since the beginning of 2009 the data storage law has been in effect in Germany which has lead to that some people don't dare to use the phone or email to contact psychologists and the like when they have a problem. In Germany 11% state that they have avoided to use the phone when they have needed to because they know the communication is being stored. In Sweden, which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, this would in my opinion be disastrous.
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