Wednesday, March 27, 2002 |
10:06 - A Call to Arms
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2922052.htm
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Well, everybody else is linking to this, and with good reason, so I'd better do the same.
1. Do you care if a few giant companies control virtually all entertainment and information?
2. Do you care if they decide what kinds of technological innovations will reach the marketplace?
3. Would you be concerned if they used their power to compile detailed dossiers on everything you read, listen to, view and buy?
4. Would you find it acceptable if they could decide whether what you write and say could be seen and heard by others?
Those are no longer theoretical questions. They are the direction in which America is hurtling.
Media conglomerates are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination of digital information.
If you're not infuriated by these related trends, you should at least be worried. If you're neither, stop reading this column. You're a sheep, content to be herded wherever these giants wish.
But if you want to retain some fundamental rights over the information you use and create, please take a stand. Do it soon, because a great deal is at stake.
I hope you're among the latter. I also hope you're willing to take a little time, as I will be doing, to call and/or write your representatives and try to convey just how evil they're being-- how not one sane consumer would be in favor of this act, and how it only serves corporations, and only in a psychological or punitive sense (they want to stick it to the users, regardless of whether their financial woes can be traced to piracy or not, which it can't). And with all the money that the media sector is flinging into Congress right now (now including Saban), we're right on the edge of an entire industry's rights being legislated by the corporations themselves. When enough money flows, any integrity that the lawmakers ever had gets flushed down the storm sewer.
Doesn't anybody in Washington have the guts to stand up in the face of all these millions of dollars and the inevitable Media Mafia and say "Enough! I represent the people!"?
We can only hope so, and try to make them see how important this is. Because there's just one thing we hold over them, of which we can assure them: Not one Senator who votes for the SSSCA (or whatever it's called now) will be re-elected.
It's shutting the barn door too late, I know, but it's the only power we as voters have.
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