jawfish

Why iPhones and Text Messages and MP3s Matter
john posted in memes, politics & culture on October 3rd, 2007

Take two current giant-corporate-media blunders:
Apple introduces brickware, software updates that can make an iPhone completely unusable if the owner has changed the standard software. Apple doesn’t want owners to modify their phones to run more applications or take calls on other phone networks.

Verizon censors political text messages on their cell system because they objected to the content.

Ok Verizon has already lost this battle, and Apple will too. But they illustrate a nasty trend in the power-politics between giant multinationals and users.

And today, Sony announces that it believes ripping your CDs to MP3s or even just backing them up is piracy.

Ordinarily I would snort and ignore stories about the iPhone or text messages as silly consumerism. I haven’t the slightest desire to use either, and I don’t think the foundation of the Republic exactly depends on access to gadgets. But I do think a healthy civic life depends on access to communications, and these days that depends on the hardware and software that connects us to the Internet and the phone networks. Just look at the use of text messages in Iraq and Burma and China to protest the government for some topical examples. I don’t want government to step in on the Apple case – if they want to shoot themselves in the foot, it’s OK by me. On the Verizon case I do need government to protect my rights because there are a very limited number of choices in phone service, and little real competition. Even more important, Verizon was explicitly denying political speech on a public network.

Laying civil liberty issues aside, I want to look at the process of establishing the ground rules between corporate media and users. Since the nineteenth century when a misguided court assigned civil rights to American corporations, giant companies have constantly tested the limits of their power versus individuals. They have fought unions, safety rules, and environmental regulation, they have colluded with each other, and they have dipped into the public purse by maintaining a steady flow of money to politicians. The effect of what they are doing, just taking care of the shareholders ma’am, is to constantly apply pressure on the property and rights and personal data of individuals. By definition individuals can’t afford to monitor the big companies nor to push back very often, so over the long term corporations will gain power and individuals will lose it. Worse, the notion of what’s fair and what’s not moves with the current status, because people naturally accept the status quo as normal. So each new affront seems too minor to be worth fighting for, until one day we wake up in an Orwellian society.

Even when they lose battles, as Verizon, Apple, and Sony will, they move the status quo. Merely by making the outrageous assertion, they move the field of what-is-reasonable in their favor. (see “waterboarding is not torture”, “Saddam was involved in 9/11″, “WMDs in Iraq” and on and on from the Bush administration.) When there is no punishment for making outrageous statements, those statements become redefined by the civic culture to acceptable or at least commonplace. In a trivial example, this is what has increased vulgarity on television, it has also led to unnecessary war in Iraq and possibly a coming attack on Iran. Of course at the the bottom of this particularly ugly slippery slope is Fascism.

But you digerati say, the Internet enables all sorts of free and unfettered speech and access to information which will counteract the bullies. Yes it’s true, but even though I use open source software to read and write to the Internet, my connections depend on a small set of corporate sources, Sprint and Verizon. Practically speaking, my ability to find anything or to be found on the Internet, depends on Google.

It’s up to us. The next time you agree to let a phone company tap phones, or a bank to sell your data, or a data company to sell your own data back to you, or Google and Yahoo to censor search results in China, think beyond that one incremental step to the whole picture of how the line of scrimmage between big corporations and individuals has moved down field. Think about the need to push the line way back every few years in order to maintain a balance of power. If you really want to scare yourself silly think about the unholy alliance between military contractors and the executive branch.

So What Would I Do?

If you complain, you must supply a proposal. I want to do a few radical things:

First I want to define an individual’s data as private property, unauthorized use to be a felony, including genome, speech, statistics, history, and everything else. This might prevent Google and other collectors of personal data from using it or passing it on to the government.

Second I want to remove the legal notion that a corporation is a legal person, and redefine it as a chartered organization with privileges and responsibilities, including a duty to the community as well as the shareholders. Officers and directors could be personally criminally responsible for some criminal policies and actions. Illegal dumping of hazardous waste, killing Iraqi civilians for two examples. The corporate charter could be revoked, just as the FCC used to be able to revoke a broadcaster’s license.

Third, I would start using anti-trust laws as we used to do. It is ridiculous that we have allowed the breakup of the old Bell phone companies to be rewound.

What’s your feedback?