IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH – Learn this by heart or else Save internet

There is a lot of gloom and doom on every channel these days. From each continent tales and images of discontent and protests and resistance.

A world economy that since 1970’s has been built on a whiff of air and a bit of hash is going down the drain. An indebted world is printing cash to try to save itself. Like pouring oil on fire to quench it. And Greece is already having visions of slipping hundreds of years back into feudalism.

And how do we find out about all this so easily? Where do we get the videos and views and opinions of people, all of which mainstream media will not touch with a pole? From something that the Americans built to preserve communication during a nuclear holocaust – the internet.

Like a pygmalion and a hundred headed hydra, the web is something that the anarchists always dreamt of – existing outside any government control and used and maintained by people without any fixed ideology or lobby. Growing and changing faster than anything that can be built to control it.

Controlled by none, used by all according to need and want, becoming a way of life, giving vent to fantasy and reality of the pervert and the revolutionary alike. And since all of us are a bit of both, it works for us.

Rapidly it has become a weapon that has toppled governments – From Tahrir Square and spawned civil protests – From Occupy movements to Anna Hazare at Ramlila.

 

That is when it caught the attention of all even more – not since Gutenberg sparked the end of the Dark Ages by democratizing knowledge has a more potent weapon come in the hands of the comman people

Which is why it will be fought now. The Bastille versus the Monarchy, all over again…

And so the fundamental fight has begin – to save the internet and to save the light. A war declared by the same people who purport to understand the economy and how people’s lives work. Fought by the anonymous multitude, as hackers, as ordinary bloggers, in conversations…

In India, the government uses its strong arm on Google to intimidate lesser would be rebels. It sends its enforcement directorate to do its ‘democratic ‘ work. Next they will send in TAX guys and then maybe the ATS (Anti-Terrorism squad) . In USA, bills like SOPA and PIPA are trying to break the back of the wild lawlessness of the internet.

The fight against online censorship has just begun. China showed the way. Behind all the condemnations that politicians showered on China’s draconian measures and behind the basking self-congratulatory back-pats they gave themselves on being guardians of democracy and free speech, they were quietly studying the Chinese model. This is the testing waters…

“They destroy what they do not understand or control”

As this is true of human mobs, so it for governments

Like the benign tyrant, the elected kings of democracies of the world like to control the demos – i.e. the people so as to rule them better. No government likes an entity that they cannot control or muzzle. And no lobby which takes care of all finances in democratic governments likes to see its business model circumvented by the sheer democratic power of the internet.

But the twin arguments that is used to argue for the censorship of the internet – Piracy (and hence the destruction of economy as we know it) and Anarchy (or to put it more bluntly – true democracy) are both self defeating unless internet is itself shut down.

Piracy or broadly sharing of anything two users cannot be controlled anymore. Megaupload may be down but Piratebay still rules on. Now Tribler is here - where control or tracking becomes impossible. Wikileaks is down, Hackers Anonymous is here – . Music companies and other companies need to wake up to a different business model. The old one is dead. We cant be forced to buy overpriced CDs anymore unless it has something of more value than just tracks. Radiohead and Stephen King have experimented with different business models giving free books and music. Have they gone bankrupt? On the contrary, their sales are more than ever!!

Coming to the anarchy part – the thrust of the censorship brigade today. Every era needs a bogeyman. Anarchy has been one of the favourite for a long time. Anarchy as a political philosophy has been lost in the haze of the term itself – loosely used for anything that is out of control. Anarchy, atleast in the internet form, stands for complete and unrestricted sharing of opinions and knowledge.

Both have been realities for more than a decade now. The evidence is for all to see – we have a freer world online than offline. Given a choice, what would anyone choose?

This is what is being fought against – this freedom of choice that is available at the click of a button. That is the real reason why the two biggest bastions of democracies – the US and India are trying to leash the internet and co-opt it.

Orwell could not have said it better in 1984

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Its a larger fight to be won, battle by battle…

Times are going to get very interesting, on all fronts!!! Stay tuned…

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