The Battle for The Internet

Even the most erudite Internet savvy modernista may have missed something rather large looming on the web’s horizon.  Legislations aiming to more tightly control and police the Internet are being debated, which would affect the Internet, and how information is shared, as we know it.  Here I will outline what these Legislations propose and what it would mean for the Internet and the Digital Industry.

First came Protect IP in the US in May 2011. Protect IP or PIPA, which stands for Protect Intellectual Property Act rewrote an older online property rights infringement law by giving more power to policing online use.  It was criticised for potentially infringing civil liberties, free speech and for posing a threat to user-generated sites and online communities.  High-profile opponents such as American Express and Google argued that such legislation would suppress innovation and stall progress in the, still evolving, digital and Internet industry.

Then came SOPA  (Stop Online Piracy Act) in the US in October 2011.  It also proposed added empowerment for US law enforcement against piracy and copyright infringement. Again, it was opposed by the Internet community as being a potential threat to innovation, startups, smaller websites and freedom of speech.  SOPA proposed giving the law the power to shut down Internet domains for “infringing content posted on a single blog or webpage”.  It was feared this would threaten smaller companies, sites or blogs and make prosecution from accidental infringement rife amongst the digital industry.

On 18^th January 2012 an online protest was spearheaded by Reddit, Wikipedia, Google, Mozilla and Wordpress who displayed a ‘blackout’ on their homepages in protest of the proposed laws.   It resulted in the proposed bills being shelved indefinitely.

However, while protests against SOPA and PIPA were gaining momentum a multinational treaty, ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement), had been quietly under negotiation since June 2008 and was being signed by the US, the European Union, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.  Following this widespread protest erupted across several European cities and the European Parliament’s appointed chief investigator resigned.  Germany and Poland subsequently distanced themselves from the treaty amid the protests.

Large intellectual property-based companies support the agreement, as a response to an “increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works" which many argue would safeguard jobs and industries that are being damaged by piracy.   While Internet Lobbyists argue that digital industry prosperity would be endangered by legislation on the world’s most vibrant growing sector.  Digital and web startups would be placed in uncertain terrain under the law thus threatening job creation and innovation and quelling startups while making the ‘web less stable.’

For example under ACTA a graphic designer flying internationally could have their laptop searched for copyright infringement and could be fined or imprisoned because a font or picture used in a client presentation made them liable for criminal charge.  Web hosting providers would be forced to monitor what their customers were doing online and forced to report any customers who could then be imprisoned.   Web hosting companies would also be liable if they linked to any sites that contained copyright-infringed material, not an easy thing to police.  SEO would also be hugely affected by ACTA for smaller sites, almost wiping out their SEO ranking and a trademarked phrase, template, background, image or sound that wasn’t double checked for legalities could mean the end for a site as the hosting provider would have the responsibility and power to shut down your ISP.  This would also hugely impact on Blogging sites, which essentially enable a free flow of information. 

On 22^nd February approval for ACTA was stalled when it was referred to the European Court of Justice and on the 28^th petition signed by 2.4 million Internet users against ACTA was handed to parliament.  Meanwhile Reddit crowd-sourced an alternative to official legislation releasing a first draft for a Free Internet Act (FIA) on the 27^th February, which outlines aims to; "promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation online, while preventing censorship and allowing users to browse freely without accidentally breaking the law.”

The EU commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, Viviane Reding said "We need to find new, more modern and more effective ways in Europe to protect artistic creations that take account of technological developments and the freedoms of the internet."  Time will tell if a resolution can be met where both the Internet’s freedom can protected and piracy policed, either that or a new models for digital consumption created.

Further Reading

Europe Refers ACTA to Court of Justice

Stop The Great Firewall of America  

Twitter’s Reputation, Social Revolution and The New News in 2011

I admit it; this time last year I was one of the Twitter nay-sayers.  I had an account with a picture, I had ‘Tweeted’ and followed people’s accounts that popped up.  It seemed simple enough to me and, quite frankly, pretty dumb.  I’d given it a shot – and I didn’t get it.  I passed the same meme to others that I had absorbed myself, and dismissed Twitter as an over-hyped soapbox where people document what they had for breakfast.

This is, for many, the default judgment of the social network based around 140 characters and second in line to Facebook’s throne.  In hindsight this is a verdict solely of those who don’t understand Twitter or know how to use it to its full potential.  A recent report by Wildfire found that even many Technology and Media company heads who have jumped aboard the Twitter bandwagon with a business profile haven’t actually grasped its ability for real interaction and engagement.  A recent Business Insider article held the headline ‘Media Tycoons Say they Understand Twitter But Have No Time For It-Then Reveal They Don’t Understand It’ which basically says it all.

Like a Trending Topic on the site itself Twitter snobbery can at-times seem like fashionably current viewpoint, in fact its ignorantly outdated.   Just look at the events of the past year.  You won’t have to look far for headlines in which Twitter featured, played a part in or out-scooped.  Twitter in 2011 has not only made the news but helped create the events that have instigated radical social shifts and major, global headlines.  As the Business Insider wrote recently Twitter has become “a revolutionary new interactive media platform and media distribution system, an interactive ‘cable company’ for the digital age.”

However the misconception that Twitter is solely for talking at people rather than conversing and sharing still persists.   Twitter can indeed be a one-way conversation in the ‘asymmetric model of sharing’ -a bit like an RSS feed.  It is, of course, very popular in this way as favoured platform for public figures who use the service to relate to fans and publicise various aspects of their work or life without having to personally connect to every follower in the way the Facebook is structured.  The list of public figures from popstars, high fashion designers, politicians, philosophers, campaigners, writers, film stars and media figures is veritable who’s who of the world and has proved a new source for information on those who regularly feature in the news, for the first time direct from their keyboards (unless, like some, they are managed by their PR team, which for some overly verbal stars could have saved some scandal.)  It’s a new, more direct way of those in powerful positions coming into contact with the, well, 99% of the population.  Just imagine Martin Luther King, Marylin Monroe or Jimi Hendrix’s Twitter accounts…the mind boggles.

Conversely Twitter is also an extremely efficient platform for multi-way communication to various and open amounts of people and groups.  This is by employing simple tactics while Tweeting.  Twitter, basically, has its own coded, practical language: @ signs and # hashtags perform important links between topics, people, events, organizations and trends and acts like a channel or stream to direct posts to audiences, regardless of whether you follow each other.  Once embraced, those hashtags and @s started to illuminate a social network that is not only as informative as the news and email but actually better.  If news is to be new, it cannot get fresher than from the mouths of those making it.  From the person on the street to the person on your screen.

It is a duality between Twitter’s ability to act as a one way feed as well as a communication tool between exponential amounts of parties that makes it such an effective social and news tool and the one way model is not to be dismissed either;  As Mark Suster points out Twitter’s asymmetrical model means users have a new form of online identity, distinctive to email or Facebook identity (although Google+ is doing this now and Facebook has followed suit) by being m0re of a multi-layered business card or channel rather than a personal space or address.  In response to those who say that Twitter is just inane noise, I now respond; ‘just click unfollow’.  Less etiquette-riddled than the Facebook version to ‘unfriend’ Twitter is what you make it and who you allow to populate your feed.  Breakfast history posts need never feature, and be warned I’m ruthless on this rule.


Twitter’s Year

For me it was the summer of 2011’s London riots where suddenly a new perspective on how incredible Twitter actually was as an information-sharing platform dawned on me.  While sitting in the Vexed offices news from Twitter about how and where the riots were spreading, and the subsequent #riotscleanup that followed provided my first experience of how Twitter surpasses news in speed of delivery and relevance and numbers of sources.  From Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, Bin Laden’s death, the UK Riots, the Occupy movement, Press ‘super-injunctions’, the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and the Royal Wedding have all been scooped by Twitter or had Twitter playing some part in the story.   For example in Marches front page news story the Japanese earthquake and tsunami this year
Twitter became a replacement communication service when phone lines went down, and on the other side was one of the most tweeted-per-second topic of the year.

The adbusters co-founder and person credited with building up the #Occupy movement into a global phenomenon praised the simple power of a Twitter hashtags saying: “[Occupy] started off when the Twitter feed started going crazy with that hashtag”, saying that social media played a crucial part in taking the movement worldwide and mobilizing the idea into mass actions.  In freedom of information stories such as phone hacking, Wikileaks and injunctions the power to share information in such an effective way is effecting power structures all the way to the top of politics, bringing fear into regimes and governments across the globe.  In the case of the #injuction one footballer took to keep an affair a secret the gagging order didn’t cover Twitter’s mouth as people gleefully and freely passed the truth that the press couldn’t utter at a dizzying rate of tweets per second.  Twitter’s ability this year to out-news the news has seen it at the epicentre again and again of debates about freedom of information.  Its no coincidence it is one prominent tool that activists such as WikiLeaks and hacking groups such as Anonymous use readily.  John Naughton wrote in The Observer this  month; ‘I had a fascinating conversation with a State Department official who […] told an instructive story about how a senior colleague was baffled when a demonstrator appeared in Tahrir Square holding up a placard that contained only a Twitter hashtag. “What’s that?” asked the baffled diplomat.’ Indeed.

Twitter’s power, like most social networks, is that it is a cross section of society from highbrow journalists to people on the streets who would be news sources, but instead now have a direct platform themselves – with the power to pass information widely, at speed and with clever marketing tactics.  So although Twitter is named after a rather unimportant chirping and chatter its important to note that its power comes, like the uprisings it is enabling, in numbers and the power of information and freedom of sharing.  A single bird’s tweet, if you like, sounds deafening when millions of birds are chirping, a powerful motif for a new-era of power of the masses.  With 100+ million active users and over 250+ million tweets per day Twitter, used to its full potential, passes information more efficiently and directly between locations, sources, groups and topics around the world like ever before.  Suddenly the outdated notion of Twitter as just silliness seems rather facile.

Looking forwards, Twitters future lies largely in the freedom to share information remaining untouched by the governments it challenges.  For now, however, you’ll find me browsing Twitter for my daily fix of news, as well as interacting with people from across the world about topics as serious as #FreedomofSpeech and #TheWaronWant to #OMGWTF

We all know power is knowledge, only now it comes in at under 140 characters.

by Elle Holgate aka @HoxtonHers and @africanelle

Links / Sources:

We Have Only Scratched The Surface of The True Value of Twitter, Both Sides of The Table, Mark Shuster

2011: A Year In News-Breaking Tweets, Kate Bussman, A Twitter Year, Stylist

http://www.businessinsider.com/media-tycoons-have-no-time-for-twitter-2011-12

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/twitter-self-serve-platform-launches/37263/

http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/12/05/the-top-hashtags-and-topics-of-2011-charlie-sheen-egypt-mcdonalds-and-apple/

http://yearinreview.twitter.com/en/tps.html

http://mashable.com/2011/12/06/tweets-per-second-2011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

http://mashable.com/2011/10/27/occupy-wall-street-adbusters/

http://yearinreview.twitter.com/en/tps.html