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A Black Day For New Zealand

I have become a fan of Twitter, the social media site that allows you to build a network of friends, called (without irony) 'followers'.

New Zealand Twitterers are using the site to show resistance to the passage of ammendments to the copyright laws, in particular Section 92a which could see draconic responses to claims of copyright infringement, such as file sharing (especially music and film - the music industry, in particular, has been vocally lobbying the changes).

Blackout was conceived by Juha Saarinen leading to a full Internet blackout day on February 23rd to protest the possibility that the law will be rubber stamped without proper regard for the principles of law that it ignores. Twitterers are blacking out their faces and backgrounds of their pages as a protest. British actor Stephen Fry, who has become something of star in the Twittersphere (second only to Barack Obama by number of followers), has taken up the cause and blacked out his face and spoken in media about his support.

Critics of the law change, and I am one of them, say that having access to the internet cut by an ISP is a user is accused of copyright violation, without any standard of proof and no legal process is a violation of civil rights.

The music industry argues that it has the interests of the artists at heart, that illegal digital sharing of music is devastating the music industry. That said, last year was a bumper year for New Zealand music and the local scene seems more vibrant and diverse that it has been in some time.

What is true is that dynamics of the music business have changed dramatically - in spite of the music industry - whose practices and behaviour have never been exactly what one might call 'squeaky clean' and whose exploitation of artistes is the stuff of legend (If you can find a copy of The Hit Men, grab it).

Section 29a is not going to save the traditional music business, nor is any Metallica v Napster type of hostility towards fans and consumers.

While the Blackout is an interesting idea, and one which I hope helps make the current government think twice before permitting their predecessor's ill-conceived legislation to become law, I wonder if it may be too little too late.

The annoying thing on Twitter is that replacing a picture of yourself with a black square makes the tool virtually useless (I use an Adobe Air application called tweetdeck to manage the communication porcess) because without face recognition I don't know who I am talking to, or who is talking to me. So it becomes something of an excercise in cutting off your face to spite your face.

It's not to late to make a difference. The opportunity is to use the web to express your citizenship and participate in sensible government.But leaving it to a passive aggressive act, such as blacking out your profile picture isn't enough - it won't have salience (too easy for law makers to dismiss it as the flaky fringe - which Twitter is considered by some to be).

Get on the phone to your MP, blog about it, write to the Newspaper, find a way of hitting those with vested interests where it hurts (Don't buy music for a month ).

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)

Comments

Jen Corbett

February 17, 2009 at 10:33 am

You're right, blacking out your picture isn't enough to change any law. I agree that blacking out your picture also puts amajor barrier to the interface between you and the other person. But this is not the point.

@jonathangunstan tweeted how, after being told about the protest and Stephen Fry's involvement on twitter, tvnz asked "whats twitter?". So perhaps twitter will be on the fringes for a while yet. But for the time being, isn't this a good thing?

What this blackout illustrates, is a groundswell occuring in a new media forum that evades the barriers and restrictions of regular media. It allows for and facilitates free speech. Through Twitter, people are able to collaborate and discuss important social issues in a new way - and draw attention to them also.

Twitters ability to act as a social instrument that measures issues also demonstrates its power to spread and muster support for issues that would be on the margins in regular media. It is a true objective medium in that it facilitates discussion but doesn't gatekeep it.

It is my opinion that there is a new kind of social empowerment going on in twitter that perhaps hasn't been seen to this kind of degree since long, long before the internet. This is demonstrated in things like the black out, or in fundraising and publicising a deserving cause like charity: water.

This is precisely why governments and companies for that matter should care about what is going on here.

Twitter presents a new outlet for political and social debate.
It connects the bloggers, the thinkers the people who care about certain issues and demonstrates a unity that has long since disappeared in ordinary social sphere. If used correctly, Twitter stands to add potency to protest or movements where older forms (that have long since lost their potency) left off.

Perhaps this truly puts the social into "social networking". It enables minds to meet on common grounds and overcome the usual barriers that have been set up by the one-way channels of traditional media.

People around the world with ears on the twitter grapevine who care about copyright law are now interested in what is occuring with copyright in NZ and section 92a .

I know that without twitter I would not be so aware of what this law means or be able to gather how much popular opinion is against it. I don't think Stephen Fry would either, for that matter.

Surely that means something?

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