Citizen Journalism

Wired reminds us that we can rail against and complain about the intrusive, privacy-destroying and free-speech-threatening monitoring that Iran has been employing against the protestors over the past few months, but we have to remember two things. First, US and European companies provided the hardware and software to Iran for them to do this. Second - our own government does the same thing, and we should stop it.

Regarding the first problem, bipartisan Senators are proposing a ban on government contracts to companies caught selling such technology to Iran, and it's technically illegal for US companies anyhow (which might not be stopping everyone, and appears to be using Secure Computing's (now McAfee) SmartFilter according to the Open Net Initiative's testing.

You might have heard about the posthumously released video by a Guatemalan lawyer accusing his president of assassination in the event of his death, for not participating in a money-laundering scheme. If not, read about the video on boingboing.

It's ignited a full-blown protest against corruption in a country known for not being kind to activism. There are live protests ongoing and rumored additional strikes and protests against the government and its narco-trafficking connections, and a very active online media component (local TV stations are avoiding the events like the plague, but online outlet Libertopolis is broadcasting the protests, and there is a twitter hashtag (#escandaloGT). Read more on different citizen media and follow updates at boingboing's coverage of the scandal, and CNN's slanted coverage: "Guatemala rejects allegations of role in lawyer's death," which follows Guatemala's own media's tactic of not speaking about the mass protests:

Sometimes, I lie awake at night and worry about copyright. I then start worrying if this makes me irreconcilably weird.

I worry both for our American culture, as items have stopped falling into the public domain and becoming available to re-use and re-mix, or simply to re-present for free. If this doesn't seem like a problem, this video on a 6-second drumbeat will blow your mind - especially if you then read this story about an artist being sued for a 1 minute clip of silence making fun of John Cage's 4'33" of silence. The artist ended up settling out of court.

I worry more generally about international trade and development, as we inflict ever-tighter IP regulations on countries we give aid to or trade with - regulations which we scoffed and flouted during our own development.

We're no longer protecting innovation with these laws - we're protecting the first movers (often big, established businesses), and encouraging gaming the patent system to try and get the most generic and sweeping patent accepted.