Madness (Summer, 2000) 
----------------------

While many are deeply distressed, who among us can say they're surprised at the
unfolding events of this year? Anyone who can needs to start paying closer
attention.

Corporate America has gone mad with litigation and its obsession with the Net.
Meanwhile, governments the world over are doing everything possible to close
the Pandora's Box of freedom the Net has created. It's getting pretty ugly out
there.

Our troubles are only a small part of the story. Sure, we've never faced this
kind of corporate venom before. But when things like the Telecommunications Act
of 1996, Digital Telephony, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and
"anti-cybersquatting" bills win easy passage, it's inevitable. The Internet,
once the shining beacon of free speech, cultural exchange, and open expression
is fast becoming the exclusive property of big business and oppressive regimes.
At least, this is how it appears in their minds. We cannot let our own
perceptions be corrupted by this invalid premise.

How else would it be possible to claim that a piece of email (the "ILOVEYOU
virus") could cause $10 billion in damage and that, once again, hackers are
responsible? How would it be possible to completely gloss over the fact that,
once again, all of the problems were because of a gaping weakness in a program
called Microsoft Outlook and that this is a lesson that should have been
learned from the Melissa virus a year earlier? Very few in the hacker world
have been affected by any of these demonstrations of stupidity and it s because
we know not to blindly trust programs (particularly ones from Microsoft) when
it comes to security issues. The corporate media misses this vital point and
instead looks at hackers as the cause of the problem, when anybody in the world
could have done this simply by sending email.

The way the media covers things is only a small symptom of a problem that
continues to get worse. Several years ago it would have been almost unheard of
for a corporation to bully someone into submission on the Net using nothing but
its might. Today we seem to hear of a new case every day.

No doubt a lot of what's happening is bolstered by court developments such as
those that are proceeding against us. And if we were to back down and agree
that it was acceptable to deny people the right to know how technology works, a
dangerous precedent would be set and then you would see a hundred more lawsuits
filed for "offenses" ranging from writing source code to writing articles about
source code.

It's safe to say that new developments in technology are scaring the corporate
world to death. What milestones like Napster represent to them is a potential
loss of the control they've held for so long. Whereas before, record companies
(yes, most of the major ones are owned by the same corporations suing us under
the DMCA) made the decision as to what music would become popular, now the
potential exists for people to do this on their own and completely bypass the
traditional means of distribution. There's little debate that this could erode
some of the massive profits these companies currently enjoy. But it's far less
clear that artists themselves would be adversely affected. Many, particularly
those who aren't already in bed with the record companies, have come out in
full support of Napster and the increased ability for the consumer to choose.
Naturally, the music industry has distorted the issues in this case in much the
same way the motion picture industry has distorted the ones in ours. For one
thing, all Napster does is point people to sites that have the music they re
interested in. One could even consider that to be a service to anyone wanting
to shut those sites down. Another issue is that the record companies seem to
believe they have the right to make money every time someone hears a song they
own. This is the same mentality that has made it illegal for Girl Scouts to
sing "Happy Birthday" around a campfire. The truth is, they don't have this
inalienable right to get paid each and every time someone plays their music.
Unless we give it to them. The Net is merely a new medium, the modern day
equivalent of trading cassettes with friends. In fact, CD sales have been
increasing over the past year. The record companies' reaction? They would have
increased even more were it not for MP3s and things like Napster. Right.
Eventually, they will lose this battle but not before wasting a lot of time and
money trying to stifle the development of technology.

A wise man once wrote, "That ideas should freely spread from one to another
over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of
his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by
nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without
lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe,
move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive
appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

That wise man was Thomas Jefferson.

We don't favor piracy in any way. People who sell CDs that they have burned are
clearly making a profit off of someone else's work. But sharing music over the
Net is just not the same thing. In all likelihood, more people will be exposed
to new artists as a result, meaning the record companies will no longer be the
only way they can reach the public. This obviously works much better with
artists who are looking for exposure on the Net. Those who don't want their
material spread in this way should make their wishes known, but we cannot see
how, short of banning anonymity altogether, it would be at all possible to
prevent people from trading music.

Such thoughts are not at all far from the controversy. In recent remarks at a
conference, Edgar Bronfman, chairman of Seagram, which owns Universal, which,
yes, is suing us under the DMCA, came up with this gem: "Anonymity... means
being able to get away with stealing, or hacking, or disseminating illegal
material on the Internet - and presuming the right that nobody should know who
you are. There is no such right. This is nothing more than the digital
equivalent of putting on a ski mask when you rob a bank."  Make no mistake,
anonymity is as much a perceived threat to corporate America as encryption has
been to the Clinton administration. In both instances, the very fabric that
defines the Net is being remodeled by people who have no right at all to do
this. Unless we let them.

And then there's speech. Free speech has always been the enemy of those seeking
to exert massive control. Now that legislation has made it possible for this
control to be extended to the Net, we can look forward to increasing attacks on
mere speech. For instance, if you intend to register a domain name that is
critical of a corporation, watch out!

It used to be that you could criticize whoever you wanted and, as long as you
weren t libelous, your rights were respected. That s all changing. George W.
Bush said it best when he tried to shut down www.gwbush.com for being critical
of him: "There ought to be limits to freedom." Fortunately, he failed. But many
others are continuing to attack speech nonetheless.

In addition to some parody political sites of our own, we thought it would be
fun to register a few four-letter word domains as well - this became possible
within the last year as Network Solutions stopped being the only Internet
registrar in this country. For years, they had prevented the use of certain
words because they considered them offensive. Now, thanks to competition, you
can find a registrar who will give you the site you want. And that's how
www.fucknbc.com was born. We didn't even get around to publicizing the site or,
for that matter, making a site. We simply pointed it to NBC until we could
figure out what to do with it. Somehow, the folks at NBC found our domain name
and threatened us with legal action if we didn't stop engaging in "trademark
infringement." They either honestly believed that by having NBC anywhere within
the web site's name that we were somehow violating their rights or they think
they have the right to tell us not to point our sites at them. Neither of these
assumptions is true although we have started to see challenges on many fronts
recently concerning linking from one site to another. The MPAA has tried to get
us to remove our links to other sites that still have the DeCSS files by filing
even more court papers against us. This time, major media not owned by the
corporations suing us such as The New York Times made a point of linking to our
links to show their opposition to this motion.

The fun continues with a company that technically doesn't even exist yet. You
may have seen some advertisements for Verizon Wireless, who have somehow
managed to co-opt the peace sign as their corporate logo. That's just the
beginning - a really big company will be named simply Verizon and it is set to
encompass all that is currently Bell Atlantic and GTE. In an effort to stave
off those free speech advocates, at least 706 domains were registered,
including all variations of verizonsucks, verizonblows, verizonshits, you name
it. Apparently, their new logic leads them to conclude that if they simply take
all of the critical names, nobody will be able to criticize them. So we decided
to take www.verizonREALLYsucks.com, knowing that we would one day find a use
for it. It didn't take long. This time the legal threat said we were violating
the new anti-cybersquatting law and that we were required to immediately hand
over the domain to them for free. While some of the goals behind the
anti-cybersquatting act were worthwhile (people who take a company name for the
sole purpose of selling it to them at a huge profit are rather sleazy, after
all), we knew it would be quickly abused. There is nothing even remotely
related to cybersquatting in what we have done. Verizon obviously has all of
the sites it wanted to register. We simply thought of a new one that criticizes
them. Since they already took sites that criticize them and obviously have no
intention of using them for that purpose, they are a lot closer to
cybersquatting than we are. While we're pleased that we may be Verizon's very
first lawsuit, we're annoyed at the utter waste of time these huge entities
continue to cause.

We have a distinct advantage as we're able to tell the world when things like
the above happen. But there are countless other cases going on right now where
individuals are being targeted because some corporation with a huge legal team
doesn't like something about someone's site. How likely is it that an
individual will be able to stand up to this? Not very, if we don't stand up for
each other.

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Our trial has been scheduled for Monday, July 17 (the day after the H2K
conference ends), at the Federal Courthouse in New York. We hope to see many of
you there. Check www.2600.com for updates and any changes.