An Internet Activist known as Aaron Swartz once said,
“Information is power, and like all power there are those who want to keep it to themselves ”
On the 20th of June, Europe passed a law that will ultimately rid the Internet of unlicensed copyrighted content,
This sounds much more complicated than it is, basically, when a creator claims work as their own legally and someone then reuploads any part of it, it will be filtered and deleted,
This would results that every upload onto social media websites, every article and Wikipedia page published, and so much more, will be filtered, and if it contains intellectual property that you haven’t sent thousands of dollars in licensing to, it will be totally inaccessible. This, in short, will abolish memes, piracy as well as the media and Internets free speech.
Think about it, your sitting down watching your favourite Youtubers, looking for and old video or compilation to find half their videos have been deleted due to ‘Use of Copyrighted Content’, because of a meme or image they used that they didn’t own, or your researching for an assignment on Wikipedia to find tens of thousands of pages to have been deleted because the information used was from history books, now hidden away from the public due to unnecessary copyrighting, the internet as we know it is under threat.
However, there is much we can do to stop it, many have been fighting valiantly to ensure we will one day have an open access Internet, and this new law, is possibly the biggest challenge yet, only in large numbers will we stand a chance against it, every single one of you is needed.
While some of you may agree with me in this being a serious issue, others among you who are only learning of this for the first time may go home tonight and ask yourself, well what can I do? The Governments have made their decision and the copyright holders have made their choice in selling their ideas for outrageous amounts and it is perfectly legal, however, there is something you can do, that many people are already doing, you can fight back.
Every one of you sitting in this room has been given a privilege, sitting in front of you or in your bags are your iPads and phones, at our school and many others, we are provided with a wealth of books and resources, bought by the school from a publishing company, available to download, like your Spanish and Chinese textbooks or Adobe apps for art, Many of us have access to Netflix and streaming sites, and on it thousands of documentaries and films, our siblings might have huge banks of scientific literature from University classes, we get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while many are locked out, while we have the keys.
Morally, it is our duty to share these figurative keys, yet, those who share the keys, engage in crimes the Government call stealing and piracy, our politicians tell us that sharing books and films is the moral equavilent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew, in the words of Aaron Swartz, “it is not immoral, but a moral imperative”.
Only those overcome with greed would refuse to let you share a copy of your book for English with a friend. The owners of these books and films, of course, are blinded by greed, they prioritise the money made from the information they sell over the information themselves, they don’t care about the lives of the low class citizens could be changed by the books they sell to they sell to the highest class citizens, and the innovations that could be made by the scientists how can’t afford to read the results of their peers.
There is nothing just in following unjust laws, like every other humanitarian issue we must protest and make a stand, in the timeless tradition of civil disobedience, declare that we will not, we cannot, agree with the privatisation of the Internet.
If we join together, we will not just make our opinions heard, but make this issue a thing of the past, will you join us?