As a rule, I tend to follow the law. This is partly due to my desire to stay out of prison, but mostly, I agree with the basic principles of the law. One thing I firmly believe is no one is above the law. Yet apparently, some people suddenly are now immune to it.
This is outrageous. I’m sure a number of students read the recent Technician focused, outlining how the Recording Industry Association of America is on a crusade against the blasphemous college Internet music pirates and can see how the law is very enforceable. And I know most people like to see a little fairness in the world. So it would follow from this principle of fairness that people expect to see the law being applied to all people in a somewhat equal fashion.
I’m afraid that idea is far from the truth.
As we sit in class every day, Congress is about to hand a giant “Get Out of Jail Free” pass to telecommunications companies that allowed the government to tap anyone’s phone calls without going through that annoying legal channel and getting a warrant. In short, the government is about to tell these companies it is okay to break the law as long as we are promoting freedom and democracy.
If that’s the case, I plan on promoting my freedom and protecting our democracy by going out and downloading as many songs as I can fit onto my iPod. This will be my defense when the RIAA comes knocking on my door and serves me papers for a lawsuit: I am promoting democracy and freedom, thereby saving the world from the evils of dictators and terrorists and poison nuclear smallpox fireballs of gas.
Either way, we are recording information and letting it flow freely, so we can bring freedom and world peace to our children.
But this is not the case. If I started downloading giant quantities of music and got caught, I’d be charged with copyright violation. Yet if the president of Telephones-R-US illegally taps a million phone calls, that person can get a pat on the back for saving America from fundamentalist terrorist groups, nuclear jihads and, quite possibly, asteroids on a collision course with Earth.
This is not fair and not right. Getting down to the basic level, both of these issues revolve around the legality of recording digital bits transmitted over copper wires and fiber optic cables onto some sort of storage device. Both wiretapping and music downloading involve some of our basic freedoms, namely our right to privacy and our rights with regard to information in the Digital Era. Yet one side is being punished and the other is being handed the gift of immunity from criminal and civil prosecution. So either the law is unfair or the people who enforce the laws are doing so in a biased and unfair manner.
The sad truth is the law is being enforced unfairly. We have taken 10 steps backward and none forward by punishing illegal downloading and forgiving illegal wiretapping.
So it’s time we took a stand. I don’t care if you believe in the right to privacy, the right to open information or the right to bear arms. We all now stand united for fairness.
If you feel the same way go here and sign the petition: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/petition/RestoreFISA
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