Tim Berners Lee is wrong. “We” don’t need a Net Magna Carta
Tags: Socialism, Net Neutrality, Liberalism, Ethics, Human Rights

The concept can be traced to an iconoclastic figure, Richard Stallman, a self-described software freedom activist who introduced the term “copyleft” in the mid-1980s. In his 2002 essay “Free Software, Free Society,” Stallman fiercely attacks the idea that intellectual property rights are one of the keystones of individual liberty, so important that patents and copyrights are affirmatively protected in the body of the Constitution.

Copyrights and Patents are in fact evil. They are not founded upon any rational basis, are a legacy idea from the age of absolute monarchy, and are a disaster for humanity on every level. This is not a matter of ideology or belief, but is a truth grounded in provable evidence based fact.

According to Stallman, “we are not required to agree with the Constitution or the Supreme Court. [At one time, they both condoned slavery.]” Like slavery, he says, copyright law is “a radical right-wing assumption rather than a traditionally recognized one.” Rebuking those who might find a Marxist flavor in his call for a “digital commons,” Stallman turns the tables, writing: “If we are to judge views by their resemblance to Russian Communism, it is the software owners who are the Communists.” […]http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/_Net-Neutrality_-Is-Socialism_-Not-Freedom-8410175.html

What Richard Stallman and the Free Software movement people are actually advocating are property rights in software, which all Libertarians and correctly thinking people would agree with on careful examination.

When you buy a copy of a proprietary piece of software, you do not actually own it; you own a limited license to use that software, that restricts your ability (if you are law abiding) to decompile it, share it by copying it, modify it, re sell it, or use it in a context and on hardware other than what the writer and owner of the software allows you to. On top of all that, the manufacturer disclaims any liability of any kind for anything that happens to you or your hardware as a result of you using their software.

When you download Free software on the other hand, it belongs to you. You have the right to modify it, to share it, to run it anywhere and to make money off of doing all those things.

The authors and licenses that cover Free Software respect your property rights in ways that the makers of proprietary, ‘closed’ softwares under restrictive licenses do not. You cannot be for property rights of ISPs and simultaneoously against Free Software and its advocates, and be logical at the same time.

Richard Stallman is actually for property rights, not against them in the matter of computer software. He is doing something about it, not by advocating violence against the makers of proprietary software, but by creating his own software and releasing it for free, under a license that respects your rights. This is a pure free market response to a problem, that uses voluntarism and liberty as its tools, and it has worked so spectacularly, and to such an extent, that it has become a commercial threat to the makers of closed proprietary software, causing them to lie, bribe, steal and use the violent State (much in the same way that the Net Neutrality advocates are trying to do) to destroy Free Software.

Net Neutrality is about state control of ISP’s hardware and the expense of bandwidth (physical property and cost). Intellectual Property is a separate matter.

Intellectual Property is a State granted limited monopoly on ideas, and who can profit from them. People who are against collectivism and the State must concede that Intellectual Property is a bad thing if they are to remain honest; especially after having read ‘Against Intellectual Monopoly’, which proves that Intellectual Property is damaging to the very thing that they claim it produces and protects; prosperity and the promotion of the creation of new ideas.

Now, lets take a look at what Net Neutrality actually means in practice.

You run an ISP, and have entered into private contracts with one million people. The State, at the behest of violent and ignorant socialists, passes a law saying that you may not shape your traffic on your own machines that deliver bandwidth to your customers.

Should you refuse to do what they say, a representative of the violent socialists will launch a ‘Class Action Suit‘ against you and you will be fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, you will have violent thugs arriving at your office to arrest you and haul you off to gaol.

This is the reality of what the Net Neutrality advocates are asking for; they want people who do not believe what they believe and who will not work for them to be put into gaol and to have their property confiscated by the State.

This is a despicable, evil and dastardly personal philosophy.

We tweeted to the person what we follow that if he wants ISPs not to shape traffic, he should set up a brand and standard that ISPs can conform to, ask them to join it and let people voluntarily work together for an internet where all traffic is treated the same, pointing out that Net Neutrality is government violence… Yes, all of that was compressed into 140 characters.

The response?

I’m advocating intelligent government, not violence…

Ostrich Posturing

It all sounds nice and cozy doesn’t it? “I’m a nice guy, I’m not violent, I want ‘Intelligent Government’ and ‘Net Neutrality’”… its all lies, designed to cover the inherent violence of the State and its clients.

These people are disgusting, not because they want a better world, indeed, their motivations are pure, and in person, they are nice people — they are disgusting because they are violent, and point blank refuse to face the facts and consequences of what it is they are advocating, and in the case of ‘Net Neutrality’ they are advocating theft, coercion and violence.

We know for sure that we do not need the State to keep us safe or to make the net ‘fair’ Underwriters Laboratories is a perfect example of how voluntary cooperation works better than the state. Indeed, the internet itself is proof of that.

We do not need the State to mandate more efficient light bulbs; private industry is more than capable of doing that in ways that environmentalists and politicians are not capable of imagining.

Think about it; Bitorrent is responsible for one third of all internet traffic. If ISPs start to shape traffic, there will be a mass exodus to ISPs who do not, causing one of three things to happen:

1/ the ISPs that shape traffic relenting to stem the loss of customers

They are only interested in making money. If they lose customers, they die. Its as simple as that.

2/ the ISPs that shape traffic entering into contracts with content providers, replacing lost customer revenue with fees from the media giants

This means that everyone who wants Bittorrent and unrestricted access to any service on the net will leave those ISPs that shape traffic, leaving those who want to watch corporate content.

The people who want full access will get what they want, the ISPs will get what they want, new business models will emerge, new ISPs — everything will work perfectly.

3/ something unexpected

The violent Net Neutrality advocates say that new services will not be able to become successful if ISPs shape traffic; this is simply not the case. No service starts at a size that requires mass bandwidth; all startups begin by using a trickle of bandwidth, they grow slowly and organically and only when they are hugely popular begin to hit a wall bandwidth wise. In other words, as these businesses grow they have a chance to find their place in the market under the constraints of it.

Here is an example of how it would work in real life. A new service starts to become popular. This service requires bandwidth (like Soundcloud). People want to use this service, but find that their ISP is shaping traffic to and from it. The ISP has two choices; un shape traffic to the new service, or risk losing their customers.

The new service, as it grows, will suddenly find that it could have millions of voices all rooting for it with their ISPs. This kind of commercial pressure is enough to ensure that any new service that starts to become popular will have enough bandwidth to grow and potentially dominate.

Think about this also; if many smaller services get together to put pressure on ISPs, their voices could be bigger than any single growing startup.

You can sit around and come up with an infinite number of scenarios that will solve the shaping problem; the point is thatinterference from the State is the worst possible solution of all solutions.

Not only is state interference not the best solution, it is also inherently immoral and violent.

If people insist on pushing for Net Neutrality, they need to acknowledge that they are indeed violent socialists.

That sort of plain speaking honesty is very important when framing any discussion about this subject. From the looks of it however, it seems that honesty about their violent tendencies is not going to be forthcoming.

And now on to Tim Berners Lee.

Tim Berners Lee has an article at Scientific American, where he says:

The world wide web went live, on my physical desktop in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 1990. It consisted of one Web site and one browser, which happened to be on the same computer. The simple setup demonstrated a profound concept: that any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere.

So, the first instance of the WWW went live on a private desktop in Geneva.

Then we get this:

In this spirit, the Web spread quickly from the grassroots up. Today, at its 20th anniversary, the Web is thoroughly integrated into our daily lives. We take it for granted, expecting it to “be there” at any instant, like electricity. The Web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles and because thousands of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its capabilities based on those principles. […] The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people’s online habits, endangering important human rights. Why should you care? Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend.

This leaves out some very important detail, and makes a statement that is factually incorrect.

The web evolved into what it is today because people decided to freely and voluntarily cooperate with each other, for their own ends as well as the common good that served those ends.

The web as we know it is NOT being threatened by Facebook and the other huge social-networking sites, or by traffic shaping; it is being threatened by violent socialists who think that it is ethical to steal property and capital from others so that their idea of what the web should be can be maintained.

Before I cary on, I agree that Governments — totalitarian and democratic alike, are a threat to people’s rights. Where we differ is in the understanding of what rights are, and where they come from. Rights do not come from the government, and no one has the right to steal, wether they are Tim Berners Lee or the State.

The net is not ‘yours’. The nicest way that I can put it is to say that this is a completely wrong construction. The part of the internet that belongs to you is your machine, bandwidth and your storage wherever it is. Your ability to contribute to it depends on the size of your bandwidth, storage and the processing power of your machine, all of which are your property, that no one has the right to steal from you.

The content you produce and upload to a third party site is subject to private contracts you enter into with the owners of sites you use. For example, Flickr has a contract that you have to agree with when you sign up with it. If you do not like it, you can decline their generous offer and go somewhere else or start up your own photo sharing site.

What Tim Berners Lee and the Net Neutrality people are advocating, is that your bandwidth and your computer, by virtue of being connected to the internet, somehow cease to be your property, and instantly become a part of some communist collective where you do not have any property rights, and where other people have rights to your property.