Friday, 20 January 2012

The slippery slope! What happens when we allow the government and corporations to whittle away our rights.


In the past few years we’ve been seeing a problem with our rights being taken away.  This not only applies to Americans but, because of the arrogance of the US government, it affects the rest of the world too. 

For far too long the politicians in Washington have been the bitch of corporations.  This problem is 2 fold.  First politicians get their funding for campaigns primarily from corporations and second many politicians have too much personally invested in corporations to be able to stay objective and work for the common citizen.  Even with the laws and regulation forcing them to remove themselves from conflicts of interests it is obvious that while there may not be an immediate conflict of interest that many of the legislation they pass will benefit them later.  IE While Senator A may not currently have any financial interest in industry Y some legislation that sets up Y to be more profitable years down the track can benefit them after they are free from conflict of interest regulations.
 
So one of the things we see going on is more and more rights being taken away from real people and more rights being given to fake people, IE corporations.  For example it is far too easy for a corporation to make an IP claim on a real person and instead of due process the common person has their rights restricted.  False IP claims by corporations have no down side for the said corporation and it is on the real person to fight to get their rights back.  Each legislation passed makes it more and more easy for fake people to take away more and more of the rights of real people.

Take the situation with MegaUpload.com.  The site has been shut down.  Millions of users are denied a service they’ve subscribed to because of these anti-piracy laws that have been passed.  UMG last month force YouTube to take down the “MegaUpload Mega Song” video.  This despite the fact that every artist in the video signed an agreement to do this video.  UMG, a fake person, seems to be having a multiple personality disorder episode.  When brought to court, by MegaUpload, UMG claims that the wrong UMG is being brought to court.  MegaUpload it being forced to jump through hoops to find out on what grounds UMG was able to remove the Video from YouTube.

This is akin to McDonald’s coming to your house and taking your dinner away from you because they believe you stole it but you were eating macaroni and cheese with a glass of milk.  Then McDonald’s just shrugging their shoulders when you ask why they took your dinner.

Legislation like PIPA and SOPA make these powers by fake people even stronger.  Much like NDAA gives you no recourse when being wrongly accused.  These “anti-piracy” legislations just open the door wider for corporations to step on anything they believe is not in their best interest.  It doesn't matter whether or not they have any actual grounds for the IP claim being made.  You as a real person can do shit fuck all about it in most cases unless you want to spend our life savings on lawyers which will probably get you no were in the end.

Speak up, make yourselves heard.  Call your congressmen.  Pay attention to what they vote for and against.  Every time they vote against real people’s rights in favour of fake people’s rights hold them accountable.  Honestly fake people don’t serve in the armed service, don’t go to jail, don’t die, don’t get hungry and with much of the legislation, going through Washington, are not accountable for anything they do.  For fuck sake with limited liability legislation fake people can’t even be sued for hurting you or someone you love. 

Is this the type of “conservative America” you want to live in? An America where your rights are slowly taken away making you numb to further changes.

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