By Cliff Montgomery – Jan. 20th, 2012
The American Spark normally does not actively engage in protest. But recently our online service has felt a need to stop U.S. lawmakers’ mad rush to shut down any part of the Internet which stokes the ire of the politicians’ corporate owners.
The chief reason for the stance of this online news service should be obvious. No serious online news source wants career politicians, government judges and corporate trolls to decide what you see, read and hear on the Internet or anywhere else.
Almost all of us have heard about the SOPA and PIPA bills in Congress. Those two “Internet censorship bills in the Senate and House would ruin the Internet for millions of people by making it possible for big entertainment companies, the Chamber of Commerce, and their lobbyists to make our government shut down websites they don’t like,” according to MoveOn.org.
Those two pieces of legislation apparently were killed by massive Net protests…at least for now.
And then came yesterday’s news.
“The FBI shut down Thursday one of the world’s most popular file-sharing websites, MegaUpload.com,” reported The Wall Street Journal, “and announced the arrest of four of the people behind it in a global crackdown against the suspected online pirates.”
But as MegaUpload had noted on its website, “the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay,” the site declared.
“If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue,” it added.
We now see what constitutes “dialogue” for the corporate elite and their political errand boys. So let’s keep this dialogue open – but on the American people’s terms. An online protest movement fighting the MegaUpload shutdown has been started by Demand Progress, an online advocacy group with a special “focus on issues of civil liberties, civil rights, and government reform,” according to its mission statement.
The American Spark’s owner, publisher and main journalist, Cliff Montgomery, joined this online protest and signed the Demand Progress form, but also added some biting comments. His chief point? “Arrest more bankers, and less file-sharers.”
The protest letter, sent to Obama and several Congressional lawmakers, is reprinted below in its entirety:
“To President Obama (Cc my lawmakers):
“You need to rein in our Department of Justice. First MegaUpload. Then Twitter? Google Docs?
“Stop messing with the Internet: Kill SOPA and PIPA and end domain name seizures now!
“If the purpose of the MegaUpload arrests is to stop those individuals who may have done wrong, then only those individuals should have been arrested.
“But seizing MegaUpload itself – one of the largest file-sharing sites on the Net – only destroys the ability of innocent people to converse with one another and share their own creations.
“Look at it this way: MegaUpload is ‘too big to fail.’
“We’re not demanding much. Only that you treat those who have gotten wealthy by running popular file-sharing services with the same courteous respect you have shown to your billionaire banker friends, whose rank gambling and incompetence have ruined the world economy.
“When you treat a single major ‘financial wizard’ – whose immoral greed drove millions of innocent, hard-working people out of their jobs and out of their homes – with the same sense of unrestrained outrage, then you may claim to be serious about justice.
“Arrest more bankers, and less file-sharers. “Until then let’s call this what it is in reality – a sick, hypocritical joke masquerading as principle. Much like the rest of your regime.”
