Which ones do you recommend?
J
[!-JטStäbŁîP-!]
-----Original
Message-----
From:
address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Bill Kowalczyk
Sent: 04 February 2003 21:27
To: address@hidden;
address@hidden;
address@hidden; address@hidden;
address@hidden; address@hidden
Subject: [DMCA-Activists] Re:
[DMCA_Discuss] Cognitive Dissident: John PerryBarlow
I thought the DMCA discussion group had something to do with the
DMCA. Let's keep on the subject. If I wanted to hear about
new Government conspiracy theories or specious arguments that any
attempt to ferret out terrorist communications immediatly leads to the
fall of American Democracy, I would be on some other discussion groups.
----Original Message
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From: Seth Johnson
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Subject: [DMCA_Discuss]
Cognitive Dissident: John Perry Barlow
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003
10:59:52 -0500
(Forwarded from
Interesting People list)
-------- Original Message
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Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003
06:38:37 -0500
From: Dave Farber
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http://click.topica.com/maaaOMbaaVLk3bakd1cb
MotherJones.com News Commentary Humor Arts Discuss Reader
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MotherJones.com / News / QA
Cognitive Dissident
John Perry Barlow, the
man who coined the term 'cyberspace',
discusses the Total
Information Awareness project, online
activism, file sharing,
and the prospect of a digital
counterculture.
Tim Dickinson
February 3, 2003 Does the
government need a search warrant
to read your private
email? Do you have a right to anonymity
online? Is computer code
protected by the first amendment?
On all three counts the
answer is yes, and for that you can
thank the Electronic
Frontier Foundation -- and by
extension, John Perry
Barlow -- for staking out those rights
in court.
The EFF is a digital
civil liberties union, co-founded by
Barlow in 1990 to fight
for free-speech and privacy rights
in cyberspace -- a term
which Barlow coined. A
self-described
"classic boomer," Barlow is still best known
for his first career,
songsmithing for the Grateful Dead,
with classics like
"Cassidy," "Estimated Prophet," and "A
Little Light" to his
credit. After a go as a
back-to-the-land cattle
rancher, Barlow, 55, is now starring
in a digital third act,
one that may well fulfill his
ultimate aspiration:
"To be a good ancestor."
When I first met John
Perry Barlow, he was sporting a black
ascot, a turquoise
pendant, and a hands-free cellular device
that dangled,
secret-service style, from his left ear; he
was wired and buzzed,
working the unabashedly geeky crowd at
the EFF's holiday open
house in San Francisco's Mission
district. Afterward, I
pressed Barlow for his take on the
Total Information Awareness
project -- the Bush
Administration's
Big-Brotherish effort to preempt terrorism
by analyzing our
purchasing habits and other previously
private data -- as well
as his thoughts on Internet
activism, file sharing,
and counterculture in the 21st
century.
MotherJones.com: What do
you make of the Total Information
Awareness project?
John Perry Barlow: I was
just writing a spam to my friends
last night about its
"all seeing eye" logo [The logo has
since been changed -
Ed.]. Looking at that logo, you've got
to wonder if they aren't
just engaged in some massive prank
on us. It's hilarious --
straight out of a Thomas Pynchon
novel. Can you beat it?
It's fortunate that this is so
stupefyingly funny.
MJ: But do you think that
we run the danger of laughing it
off and missing the
danger of it?
JPB: I don't think so. I
think that humor is part of what
saves us from despair.
The Total Information Awareness
project is truly
diabolical -- mostly because of the legal
changes which have made
it possible in the first place. As a
consequence of the
Patriot Act, government now has access to
all sorts of private and
commercial databases that were
previously off limits.
MJ: Is that what they're
hiding behind?
JPB: It's a combination
of the Patriot Act and a Justice
Department directive that
was issued in May by John
Ashcroft. Now I believe
that this invasion of privacy is
just as unconstitutional
as its ever been, but nothing is
unconstitutional until
somebody's taken it to court and
proven it.
MJ: Do you think the goal
of preempting terrorism through
data-mining is feasible,
from a technological perspective?
JPB: The thing that
spooks me about the Total Information
Awareness program is that
that it's inside DARPA [the
Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency]. And unlike the
CIA or the NSA, DARPA has
a great track record of actually
going out and making big
technology happen -- because
they're small, they're
light, they're anti-bureaucratic,
they're engineering
minded. And Poindexter may be a
convicted felon but he's
a very, very smart guy. So where
while I'd like to say
there's no way that this is going to
happen under any other
circumstances, I'm less assured of
that at the moment.
MJ: Somebody said that
this is going to lead to them finding
a lot more haystacks than
needles.
JPB: [Laughs.] That's
absolutely true. If you have the Total
Information Awareness
project working, it might be
relatively easy to find
everyone who had bought more than a
ton of fertilizer and 500
gallons of diesel in the last
year, which would be a
great way of spotting potential Tim
McVeighs -- but it would
also spot half the farmers and
ranchers in America. But
having spotted them, it couldn't
toss them out until it'd
exposed them to the next layer of
search. And the important
thing to think about there is that
they're no longer just
looking for terrorist activity,
they're looking for any
kind of criminality at all -- which
includes what I consider
to be cultural crimes, like say
marijuana smoking.
The terrifying new
reality that we're dealing with here is
the fact that all data
are is now open to government
scrutiny. All these
things that have previously been
sacrosanct and private
are now available. And what's more
frightening is that if
you are managing one of those
databases and the
government says that it wants access to it
for a completely
open-ended search you are criminally liable
if you if you tell the
people in your database that the
government is doing so.
The whole dive shop thing [in June
of last year], the
government requested the records of
everyone in the U.S.
taking diving lessons] was exposed
because one solitary dive
shop owner in Los Angeles had the
guts to come forward and
say "Hey, we're not going to give
you our database. And
furthermore we're going to go to the
press."
MJ: TIA hopes to root out
terrorists by monitoring -- among
other things -- our
purchasing habits and travel records.
But looking at this kind
of data mining in the commercial
sector, it's clearly an
imperfect science. I keep reading
stories about how
somebody's TIVO thinks he's gay because he
watched one too many Sex
in and the City's. Can we possibly
expect better from the
government?
JPB: They've already done
some of this inferential searching
-- and the way they're
going about it is enough to give you
pause.
MJ: Part of the Homeland
Security Bill is something called
the "Cyber Security
Enhancement Act" under which "malicious"
hackers can be sent to
prison for life.
JPB: It's ridiculous,
dangerous, grossly unconstitutional,
and it's perfectly in
keeping with what this
administration's been
doing across the board. This is an
administration that has
recently reserved to itself the
right to kill American
citizens anywhere on the planet for
the mere suspicion of
membership in Al Qaeda. That's really
quite and awe-inspiring
breakthrough. And the astonishing
thing is that the
American people are nodding along in their
stupor and saying
"Yeah, well, whatever it takes to stop
terrorism." I'm so
disappointed in my countrymen.
MJ: What do you think it
will take to knock people out of
that stupor?
JPB: What it's going to
take is for some of these
initiatives to actually
start affecting people out in the
'burbs. But they're so
insensate at the moment, that one
wonders how much it will
take to effect them. Right now,
it's very easy for your
standard suburban television idiot
to assume that this is
all about people who are not like
him. And his rights are
not involved. By the time he finds
out that his rights have
been involved, they may have been
so thoroughly eroded that
he may never be able to get them
back. But you as the
Navajo say, "It's impossible to awaken
a man who is pretending
to be asleep." And I think that
mostly what America is
doing is pretending to be asleep.
MJ: Do you really think
that -- that your average American
is well aware what's
going on?
JPB: Aware in some way
that's subject to massive denial.
We're aware but feel
ourselves to be so helpless that we
can't even summon up the
necessary energy to drive five
blocks to vote against
it.
A Digital Counterculture?
MJ: At the EFF party, you
and R.U. Sirius were talking about
being part of a counterculture
without a name, and I was
wondering if you could
tell me a little more about what you
meant by that.
JPB: It occurred to me
recently that I'd been a member of
every counterculture that
had been available throughout my
conscious life. I started
out as a teenage beatnik and then
became a hippie and then
became a cyberpunk. And now I'm
still a member of the
counterculture, but I don't know what
to call that. And I'd
been inclined to think that that was a
good thing, because once
the counterculture in America gets
a name then the media can
coopt it, and the advertising
industry can turn it into
a marketing foil. But you know,
right now I'm not sure
that it is a good thing, because we
don't have any flag to
rally around. Without a name there
may be no coherent
movement.
MJ: What would be the
organizing principles of this
counterculture?
JPB: Well, for starters,
that practically everything that
this administration is
doing right now is fucked. [Laughs]
MJ: I'll make sure we
print that.
JPB: Of course you've got
to have a more intelligent
response than that, but
it's hard for me to rise above it. I
think the counterculture
believes that there are ways to
manage being the world's
most powerful country that involve
creation of consensus --
ruling by virtuous example rather
than by force of arms.
Managing the world that has fallen to
us to manage in a way
that it has some morality. I think
that that counterculture
is very concerned about the
completely unchecked
ability of multinational corporations
to roam the planet and
serve their hungers without any
meaningful regulation
now. That counterculture probably
agrees that mass media
are bad for you, particularly
television. I suppose
drugs are an element. And it
appreciates irony -- as
opposed to the administration, which
clearly has an irony
deficiency.
MJ: What little
resistance there is right now in terms of an
antiwar movement seems to
be organizing online. Is that a
good thing?
JPB: Actually I'm
discouraged with the role of the Internet
in the antiwar movement.
Because so far what I see happening
is that cyberspace is a
great place for everybody to
declaim. There are a
million virtual streetcorners with a
million lonely
pamphleteers on them, all of them decrying
the war and not actually
coming together in any organized
fashion to oppose it. It
strikes me that existing political
institutions -- whether
it's the administration or Congress
or large corporations --
only respond to other institutions.
I don't care how many
individuals you have marching in the
streets, they're not
going to pay attention until there's a
leader for those
individuals who can come forward and say I
represent the
organization of those individuals and we're
going to amass the
necessary money and votes to kick you the
hell out of office. Then
they pay attention. But not until.
And so right at the
moment it would strike me that the
Internet is
counterproductive to peace.
MJ: I'm rather shocked to
hear you say that.
JPB: Well, I'm rather
shocked to say it.
MJ: Is it that people
just leave their anger online?
JPB: You vent online and
then you dust your hands off in
satisfaction and that's
the last you do. And I'm as guilty
of this as anybody.
Though in fairness I can point to EFF as
being an example that
that's not all I do.
MJ: Who got the future
better: Philip Dick, George Orwell,
or Aldous Huxley?
JPB: All of those guys
were talking about the present,
that's what science
fiction writers really do. I've been
struck lately rereading
Brave New World and 1984 at the
extent to which both of
these visions, which would seem to
be completely
contradictory, have turned out to be true and
in fact complementary.
You have the totalitarian thought
control and language
modification of 1984 going on: I mean,
consider the phrase
"weapons of mass destruction" --
completely Orwellian in
use. And at the same time you have
something like the
feelies from Brave New World which are
the soporific media
message that puts everyone to sleep.
Both of those things are
happening simultaneously. The
totalitarian message is
being transmitted while you're zoned
out in front of the
television watching the feelies, high on
soma -- which is some
combination of Prozac and Budweiser.
MJ: I was reading an old
roundtable you did with Harper's,
and I was struck by how
optimistic you were then.
JPB: Somebody came up to
me after a talk I gave recently in
London, and he said to me
that there's something
entertaining about
watching a pathological optimist try to
be pessimistic. [Laughs.]
And he had a point. I'm basically
an optimistic person. And
lately I've been thinking a lot
about groundless hope --
which in some respects may be the
only kind there is. If
your hope has good reasons attached
to it, then maybe it's
just a form of planning. I think that
election was a
consequence of people becoming hopeless. If
people had hope they'd
vote.
MJ: Is it true you used
to be a Republican?
JPB: Yeah, actually,
until embarrassingly recently. There
is, in small numbers
these days, though it used to be
larger, a libertarian
wing of Republicanism that fit my
political beliefs pretty
succinctly. But that was before
George Bush II and the
Christian fascists took over.
To Share or Not to Share?
MJ: As a former lyricist
still making money on royalties,
what are your thoughts
about online file sharing?
JPB: You'd be hard
pressed to find somebody who is more
passionate about the belief
that sharing music is good for
you as a songwriter and
good for humanity as a whole. The
best thing that ever
happened to the Grateful Dead, from an
economic standpoint, was
giving away our music.
MJ: In terms of
bootlegging?
JPB: It wasn't bootlegging.
We let people tape our concerts
and distribute the tapes.
And that became the first example
I can think of viral
marketing. The record companies
certainly didn't know how
to market us. So we became
self-marketing through
our tapes.
MJ: And that helped you
economically?
JPB: No question. And it
makes sense that it would. Because
economic success in an
information economy depends not on
scarcity, but on
familiarity. You can be the greatest
songwriter in the history
of song and if 10 people are the
only ones who ever heard
your songs, it doesn't matter.
MJ: But what if 100
million people can get it online and
nobody pays you a cent.
JPB: But it doesn't tend
to work that way in practice.
Despite the fact that
Deadheads had better recordings of all
of our songs than we were
putting out commercially, just
about all of our albums
have gone platinum over the years.
Having the noncommercial
version of information does not
appear to operate
genuinely as an inhibition against getting
the commercial version.
And also there are other ways of
conducting commerce other
than selling material objects with
information on them.
Performance for example. That's where
most of the money is.
All of this stuff about
'piracy' is fomented entirely by the
record and film
industries to perpetuate business models
that are completely
disadvantageous to both the creator and
the audience. They are
the biggest pirates in the deal. But
unfortunately, they have
made huge amounts of campaign
donations and essentially
created all the government that
money can buy. And they
have Congress. Congress is passing
laws like the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act which make it
so you can't break open
the bottles that they're pouring
your knowledge into. They
directly contravene the right to
know. The right to know,
I think, though it may not be
explicit in the
Constitution is every bit as important as
the right to speak.
MJ: Quick response: Does
Google have too much power?
JPB: I would say not --
given that they don't seem to be
using it in a way that is
monopolistic or apt to consolidate
that power. Their power
is based entirely on the fact that
their software is better
than anybody else's, unlike say
Microsoft.
MJ: Phish, the band.
JPB: My reaction to that
is changing. My first reaction was
I've been there, done
that, with better. But I think they've
evolved, and I'm eager to
hear them now that they're back
together.
MJ: Would you clone
yourself?
JPB: The idea that a clone
is you is ridiculous. A clone is
no more you than an
identical twin is you. And even less so,
because a clone is born
in a different part of time. But,
yeah, I'd probably clone
myself.
MJ: Favorite obscure
website.
JPB: Disinfo.com.
MJ: Worst piece of
digital legislation?
JPB: Oh God, there is so
much competition for that but I
would say the Patriot Act
taken in all of its digital
dimensions. Otherwise I
would say the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
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