Jello Biafra: Hacker Ambassador

by princessopensource

(((Jello Biafra))), former front-man for the Dead Kennedys, social activist, and keynote speaker for H2K, has never built a Red Box or hacked a PBX system.  His "eleetness," however, is undeniable.

In a 1997 interview with the online magazine Bad Subjects, Biafra voiced his support of the Internet, along with the need for it to remain uncensored.  His commitment to free speech in all forms of media comes with personal experience.  In 1986, around the same time 2600 was celebrating its second birthday, police raided Biafra's home, searching for a poster of rotting genitals by artist H.R. Giger, copies of which the Dead Kennedys included in their album, Frankenchrist.  Biafra was charged with "distributing harmful matter to a minor," but the case was later dismissed.  Biafra has since become one of music's most ardent supporters of free speech, and is a vocal member of he organization, "Rock Out Censorship."

Along with his praise of the Internet, however, Biafra also had a few warnings about its dangerous potential for misinformation.  He cautioned against allowing all the information the Net bombards us with to numb our minds, as well as not being sucked into the belief that everything posted on a website is true.  These words of advice are consistent with the hacker ethic by which many of us choose to live.  Along with the adage, "Knowledge is power," comes the responsibility and desire to search for the truth and weed it out from the bullshit.

Jello Biafra is right on target with his warning about the sense-numbing experience an avalanche of multimedia can cause.  If we do not take a stand against Internet censorship, the Net could become just another outlet for the (((mass media))) to force-feed us a one-sided version of the "news."  With increasing litigation over copyrighted domain names and software, a frightening future of the Web as a silicon-based equivalent of network television and Top 40 radio may not be as far off as we think.

Hackers need Biafra for his music and his mind.  We need albums like Frankenchrist to remind us what can happen if we idly sit by and watch groups like the MPAA and RIAA take away our rights to create and use code and share music we enjoy with others.  We end up like people the Dead Kennedys mocked in songs like, "The Stars and Stripes of Corruption."  "The blind Me-Generation/Doesn't care if life's a lie/So easily used, so proud to enforce..."

Biafra's post-Dead Kennedys activism and formation of his own record label, Alternative Tentacles, serve to illustrate that we must remain steadfast in our ideology.  A corporate job in systems administration does not mean we should forsake our love for figuring out the "how's" and "why's" of the ways things work, and we need to ensure that the government does not eradicate our means to do so.

Jello Biafra's presence at H2K is sure to send a powerful message to both hackers and non-hackers alike - information does not just want to be free, it needs to be that way.