Direction

One thing we can say about the year 2000 with some certainty is that it wasn't boring.  If you didn't get a sense of excitement, you probably weren't paying attention.  And not paying attention in this day and age is a real tragedy.

Forget about the Y2K fiasco.  Forget about the election absurdity.  These were just mass media theatrics, more mini-series for our short attention spans.  The events of consequence, those with true meaning... you had to look a little harder.  But they were most definitely there.

It was the year Kevin Mitnick finally got out of prison.  But it wouldn't be the year the authorities left him alone.  That won't come until 2003 - we hope.  Despite being out from behind bars since January, virtually the entire year has been a struggle - not being permitted to use many essential forms of technology, not being allowed to get a decent job, not being allowed to travel, not being allowed to give lectures on computer security.  Recently, Mitnick was threatened with being sent back to prison for daring to participate in our H2K conference over the phone from his house!  Yes, he was released from prison in 2000.  But was he freed?  No way.

It was also the year of the lawsuit.  Many of them.  Not just those involving us, although we certainly had a record-setting year.  There were, of course, the Napster and MP3 issues.  Years too late, the recording industry finally realized that the music monopoly they held would not last forever.  Their lack of foresight is overshadowed only by their naive insistence of using bullying tactics to get their way and hold onto that which was never theirs to begin with.  In 2000, individuals stood up to unlikely corporate stooges with names like Metallica and reminded them that consumers are the ultimate authority on how an industry will function - once they get it together enough to take control.  It will never be possible to prevent people from sharing music, nor should it be.  The recording industry was made to realize in 2000 that the old ways no longer work.  That doesn't mean that they won't continue to try and insist that they do work in 2001 and beyond.  But many of us have now seen the potential of "open-source" music and hopefully we'll use that to open doors for thousands of new artists as well as consumers.

The ominous newcomer which made its presence felt in 2000 was of course the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  The DMCA is what was used against us in the DVD lawsuit.  It was also used by Mattel this year to try and silence people who had figured out how its Cyber Patrol worked.  It's become a very popular means of intimidating people.  This scary piece of legislation, which everyone in the government seemed to support, makes it possible for the corporate powers to continue their domination of technology, business, and even art by simply making it illegal to not follow their oppressive and nonsensical rules.  Look at what we were dragged through this year.  Simply for reporting on a program called DeCSS that was written by someone else which managed to defeat the insecure security that prevented a DVD from being played on a Linux machine, we were treated as if we had gone out and pirated movies.  Correction: we were treated far worse since there were people selling pirated movies outside the court building for the entire duration of our trial and probably to this day without anything happening to them.  It was never about piracy.

The Motion Picture Association of America wanted to make sure they had control and that nobody, not hackers, not civil libertarians, not ordinary people in the street - dared to figure out how to challenge that control.  Selling a pirated movie is nothing to them.  But telling people how the technology works is the real threat.  We learned that this year.  And the DMCA will continue to be used against others who not only tell people how things work, but people who figure it out themselves.  (That's right, the power of the DMCA was extended in October to encompass creation - in addition to distribution - of "circumvention tools.")  We're in for some real battles in the years ahead.  The first will be our appeal of the DeCSS case, scheduled to be heard this spring.

We were hardly limited to this one lawsuit.  (Actually, we're currently involved with two cases involving DeCSS - one was the suit filed by the MPAA, the other (still pending) filed by the DVD Copy Control Association in Santa Clara, California, which, last we checked, has no jurisdiction over us here in New York.)  In the year 2000, we were threatened with lawsuits by NBC, CBS, Verizon, General Motors, Staples, the Guinness Book of World Records, and more - simply for doing what we've been doing since 1984: publishing information and expressing ourselves.  If you look through our older issues, you'll see that there's no substantial difference in the type of information we publish now and what we printed ten or fifteen years ago.  So what has changed?  Obviously there are more entities using, high technology these days so there is more to report on.  These relative newcomers believe they can force people to keep quiet about how their systems work and what their weaknesses are.  We beg to differ.  While ill-conceived monstrosities like the DMCA make our job all the harder, it will take a lot more than that to keep us from exploring and sharing information.

A good many of this year's lawsuit threats came about because these corporations were convinced that laws like the DMCA, backed by global enforcers like the WTO and WIPO, gave them all the power they needed.  Of the companies that threatened us because we had registered websites which criticized them, only Verizon was able to admit that it was indeed an issue of free speech.  Meanwhile, thousands of "cybersquatting" cases are now being decided in a United Nations court which so far has been largely sympathetic to U.S. corporate giants.  While it's clearly wrong to register a site for the sole purpose of selling it to a specific entity at a grossly inflated price, that's not what a large number of these cases have been about.  We've seen sites forcibly turned over to corporations simply because their name was a part of the domain name.  Examples include natwestsucks.com, standardcharteredsucks.com, and walmartcanadasucks.com - sites which clearly were expressive in nature yet, through twisted logic, were awarded to the companies as if criticism had actually become illegal.

We saw more mergers and takeovers in 2000 which resulted in some real monsters being born: Exxon/Mobil, Bell Atlantic/GTE (Verizon), Time Warner/AOL (still pending but quite likely), as well as a whole host of Internet service providers being swallowed up.  Every combination, no matter how good the spin, means less choice and less competition.  As consumers we suffer and as individuals attempting to express ourselves or figure out technology - we really suffer.

The broadcasting world also saw quite a few of these mergers and takeovers.  A single company now owns more than 1000 radio stations in the United States!  And they were right up there with the National Association of Broadcasters opposing the FCC's plan to finally introduce 10 to 100 watt microbroadcasting stations for true community radio - as if these tiny stations were the real threat to the world of broadcasting.  Again, free expression was seen as the enemy and successfully prevented from existing along with the corporate giants.

The brutality of the authorities in preventing legal demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles this August painted a vivid picture.  Despite all of the power of the laws and the lawsuits and the mergers and the control - the people in charge are scared.  They are utterly terrified of what independently thinking individuals can do if they are left alone.  Call it guilt, call it paranoia.  What we need to call it is opportunity.

An open society has no reason to fear its citizens.  A closed and oppressive society, such as most prisons, some schools, and all dictatorships, feels the need to constantly monitor the people under its control and to do anything possible to quell rebelliousness and feelings of individuality.  What have we seen in mainstream American society in the past few years?  More surveillance, more Draconian laws and regulations, and more power being taken out of the hands of individuals.  Whether it goes by the name of "Carnivore" or the image of Secret Service agents infiltrating schools to pick out future Columbine candidates or the legislation that eliminates the need for annoyances like search warrants when drug involvement is suspected, it's all part of the same animal.

What they will never tell you - and what almost every part of our society is designed to discourage - is that one person, one idea, one simple act of defiance can change everything.  Sure, you will see all kinds of corporate slogans embracing "revolution" and "thinking different" until you believe that counterculture was invented by The Gap.  But try applying your beliefs to actions and see how quickly you're discouraged from being truly different.

We're not only living in interesting times, we're living in what may be the most interesting of all times.  Technology and the Internet, used creatively, can bring people together in ways that have never been done before.  Artificial barriers and controls are on the brink of extinction, thanks to innovative and intelligent applications of technology.  With a populace that is informed, enthusiastic, and open to new ideas, the old-style oppression will be exposed almost as soon as it's applied.

We have some tremendous tools at our disposal.  We cannot allow them to be legislated away, acquired by the highest bidder, or dissolved through apathy.  What happens next determines how the game will be played for a very long time.  We have that power.  Is it any wonder those who think they're in charge are so frightened?