I watched CNN’s[1] live coverage of the Olympic Torch relay in San Francisco yesterday. It turned out to be an enormous victory for the anti-Chinese protesters even though they never even caught sight of the actual flame – a brilliant, absurd turn of events facilitated entirely by the wonders of US live action news.

After the London and Paris protests[2] the US news media geared up for a live extravaganza not seen since the OJ White Bronco chase. With protests on both sides (pro- and anti-Chinese) by thousands starting the day before the actual relay those newsrooms must have been cooking through the night. In the end the world’s hungry eyes weren’t disappointed.

pro-Chinese Activism

The protesters showed up(again on both sides), the Chinese musical revue showed up for the relay end ceremony, the news helicopters showed up in force[3] – but no flame. Actually, what they did do was to light the torch and then to jog it into a warehouse where it stayed for some 10 minutes or longer. The warehouse (under the watchful eye of the news helicopters) then spat out a convoy of buses and a decoy of a boat and jetski’s in the harbour to confuse the protesters as to where the torch was. Meanwhile the protesters waited patiently and peacefully along the originally planned route. An hour later the torch magically appeared on an empty street more than two miles from the original route. The relay’s closing ceremony was also canceled and the poor Chinese musicians had to pack up their stuff with their hopes of 15 minutes of network news coverage dashed. And it was all captured in glorious colour by CNN.

anti-Chinese Activism

Here’s some of what people said on the subject:

We assessed the situation and felt that we could not secure the torch and protect the protesters and supporters to the degree that we wished. As a consequence we engaged in subsequent contingency planning that we felt would keep people safe.
SF Mayor

I think we were cheated, because I think the meaning of the relay was to show the whole world that our country is hosting the Olympics
the pro-Chinese

I think it’s cowardly. If they can’t run the torch through the city, it means that no one is supporting the games.
the anti-Chinese

So then, no arrests and everyone went home. Well done to the protesters(on both sides) – you showed up and stood your ground. But why was this such a victory for the anti-Chinese protesters? They got very little face time while this was going on. It’s brilliantly simple really; because Americans (and by extension the US media) looove breaking news – unforeseen developments. Had the relay gone on as planned and there had been some scuffles and arrests the TV-watching public would have nodded in agreement with whichever preconceived notion they had; either ‘Damn right! China out of Tibet!’ or ‘Damn right! Politics out of sport!’. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead the uniform message that the news monster broadcast was that China and their San Franciscan hand-holders were so shit scared of running the peaceful gauntlet that they jumped in a van and hid the flame beneath their tracksuit shirts. An outrageous victory for the anti-Chinese protesters.

Phew! At least the flame survived

In closing I’d like to comment on the sentiment of some politics-out-of-sport groups about whether these types of protests should be linked to the Olympic Games. The argument that they are pushing is that, given the world’s economic intertwinedness with China[4], people should be protesting at the doorstep of the global corporations doing business in China before they dump on the poor athletes who only want to achieve their potential.
There is some merit in this thinking, but the fact is that this is not just an Olympic Games. It is, what has been elegantly called, Beijing’s coming out party. This is a very powerful moment for Beijing and the Chinese. This is their debutant show on the world stage; their first run as a global city; a centre of culture and glorious achievement. How can anyone be part of this level of hypocrisy without saying something?
By all means, do not boycott the actual games. All the athletes should attend and achieve their best. But why should they do so silently? Why not wear a Kasaya armband? Again I am preaching without actually doing anything[5] – but the athletes have a wonderful opportunity to show up, rock the house with their excellence and still tell China that they do not fall for the glorious delusion of the Bird’s Nest stadium.

One of the things I most admired about the US in my first visit there, in particular in Washington, was how people – everyone – expressed their opinions in the form of t-shirts, flags, tattoos and bumper stickers. And it doesn’t matter that the majority of the opinions expressed were mundane or lame or idiotic[1], the fact that people so willingly blurt out their opinion is a good thing™.

My favourite bumper sticker from that trip was this one, sold by a hairy bunch of anti-war protesters on the lawn outside the Smithsonian.

During a previous trip to Atlanta I also noticed quite a few humanist[1]/animist/atheist/fringe bumper stickers that suggests that while the vast majority of the US is solidly moderate they are tolerant of both very liberal and very conservative groups. To be honest, I’ve never encountered even a vague trace of political correctness in the good ol’ US of fuckin’A. These are all good things.

I’ve recently been reading several atheist blogs[4] and while I am rapidly tiring of them[5] there have been some funny stuff. One of these is a post of a bunch of atheist aphorisms via the Friendly Atheist – many are dull but some of are actually quite funny. But there is one in particular that I liked and thought that if it were slightly toned down it would make a good bumper sticker.

Naturally my first stop was MakeStickers.com and after trawling through their templates I got it to spit out a sample.

I’m not really sure whether the bible works, but that is the closest to relevant graphic that they have on offer. So I took it upon myself to unleash my Powerpoint skillz and produce my own. First I had to locate a suitable graphic based on proposals for atheist symbols from No Ghosts. These symbols produced prototypes [1], [2] and [3] but in the end I settled on my own.

The question is whether, if I were to be the owner of a car in the US, I would stick it on my bumper. I wouldn’t – but not because I would feel nervous about offending others[6] but I because just don’t feel that strongly about atheism – I’d rather say something about individuality and opinion – ‘Get a bumper sticker! Blurt out your opinion! We’ll all feel so much better.’

This blog is not anonymous. Even simple google searches will let you lock me down to a first name and probably a last name as well. You can easily determine the city I live in and probably also the suburb. But Anonymous is anonymous.

Anonymous is a group of internet users/vagrants who formed out of the seedy underbelly of the internet – 4chan. 4chan is a nasty place where bad people hang out and anonymously post bad things. It’s most famous for its Random forum where absolutely anything goes. 4chan itself does have rules but the rules for Random itself are summed up as follows

1. ZOMG NONE!!!1*
2. Global rules 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, and 10 are enforced.

You’ll notice that rule 3 doesn’t apply, being:

Do not post [...] Trolls, flames, racism, off-topic replies, uncalled for catchphrases, macro image replies, indecipherable text (example: “lol u tk him 2da bar|?”), anthropomorphic (“furry”), grotesque (“guro”), or loli/shota pornography.

4chan is big on memes[1] and one meme which has developed in the life of 4chan is that of Anonymous. It started out as an idea/attitude[2] and developed through a groundswell of disgust[3] into a concrete form. Today Anonymous is a group of people who are best known for their anti-Scientology protests known as Project Chanology. This protest started in response to the much discussed Tom Cruise Scientology video posted on Youtube in January 2008.

Tom Cruise loses it

Anonymous responded to Scientology’s reaction to the world’s reaction[4] to the video in a video of their own entitled Message to Scientology in which it accused Scientology of internet censorship. This escalated into a series of Denial of Service attacks aimed at Scientology web sites and a variety of real world protests.

Anonymous loses it

All of this has brought Anonymous to where it is today; a mysterious, vulgar, unregulated, non-hierarchical, not-accountable organisation which has no agreed upon goals, agenda or modus operandi. Right now they seem to be focussed on their plans for Project Chanology, but I have a feeling that it will be around for some time.
Personally I don’t entirely agree with their take on anonymous protest[5], but that’s a topic for another post. So well done to Anonymous. I am glad that you are here. More power to you, more power to all of us.

But that’s not really the point of this post. What I actually want to write about is Wikipedia, or more specifically Wikipedia’s article on Anonymous and precisely about the image displayed on the article – the one below.

Anonymous
Because none of us are as cruel as all of us

There is an ongoing battle being fought on Wikipedia about whether this image should be removed or not. It comes down to a disagreement on whether the Wikipedia policy on non-free content (i.e. the image) allows for content which cannot be attributed to any person or definable group to be used in an article. This is a subtle and fascinating issue. But first, how cool is the contrast between Anonymous and Wikipedia? Anonymous is all about personal outrage, disregard for institutionalised protection and rejection of any sort of accountability. Wikipedia is all about verifiable references, attributability and community-agreed-upon policy. 4chan (from which Anonymous was spawned) is all about uploading images without any sort of copyright/ownership. Wikipedia has long-running, principle[6] arguments about whether a single image should be allowed. Anonymous sees no value in laws/rules[7] while Wikipedia, on a daily basis, builds its policies into laws based on precedent and forum discussions. Interesting.

But back to the story. So Wikipedia is having a long argument about this image; here’s some of it.

Will: Speedy delete – in big letters: will perpetually fail WP:NFCC#10a because we can never know who holds the copyright. I seriously can’t believe people want to keep images that are blatant violations of our Non-free content criteria. Will
        Comment NFCC10a demands source and copyright holder. A source was found (seemingly midway through the debate). Please note that WP:NFCC does not require that this source be linked to. A specific description of where this source can be found in some other media may be acceptable as well (although this is not relevant as a source was found that could be linked to…again, the undercurrent and implication of where the first source for the image was, has likely colored the discussion). The copyright holder is anonymous (or Anonymous).

Ayla: Overturn and keep. After re-reading the relevant policies and discussions, I have come to agree that the WP:NFCC#10a issue is addressed by the fact that the copyright holder of the image is either Anonymous (the group) or anonymous (undisclosed). Given the nature of the group, it is more than likely that such would also be the “copyright holder” for any alternative logos. Ayla

st47: Delete per WP:NFCC#10a. Our non-free content criteria are not up for debate here. st47

IronGargoyle: Comment again. As I clarified on my page (to which Sceptre has decided to conspicuously ignore, uncivilly shout down opposition, and use blatantly misleading speedy deletion tags to game the system–all due to his conflict of interest), works that are explicitly created anonymously are copyrighted–this is clear to most parties I’m sure. As such, for explicitly anonymous works, that anonymous individual (or group) is explicitly the copyright holder (and we don’t know who they are any better or worse than any of the many pseudonymous editors of Wikipedia). It’s not that we don’t know the provenance of the image (cf. some random picture without source on the internet). It was quite obviously created by a member of Anonymous. A little good faith and common sense on that point would be excellent.

Will: Comment The point is, with Wikipedia, we can know who uploaded it (example, we can differentiate between you and I with uploads). With 4chan, you can’t. Nearly everyone, especially on /b/, posts as “Anonymous”. We don’t know which “Anonymous” uploaded it, whether it was 123.45.67.89 or 98.76.124.3. Will

Coffeepusher: Overturn this is abserd, and at least the 5th dispute I have seen that is WP:GAME against the Anonymous/Project C (I really can’t spell it) that has occured since the wiki creation…Involving editors whos interests in the project are apperant disruption of the articles themselves and a complete contempt of consesus. it also is in direct conflict with the spirit of the rules that are beeing quoted. The Non-Free image rules are created to keep from stealing someones work without giving them credit. If it is imposable to find a spicific individual, and no one will be able to validly claim that it is her/his work, no one has any actual claim on the image (orgonizational or otherwise)…?!?Coffeepusher

Stormfin: Comment This shows the massive gaping flaw in Wikipedia policy. This is an image produced by a loose group that falls under the vague ideology of anonymous. Anything produced by this community will and indeed is expected to be edited, changed, saved and redistributed. To me, this is obviously the same as having no copyright license attached. Of course, to the blinkered view fostered by WP Policy ‘it *must* have a copyright. Which it doesn’t. So we end up here. Again and again and again. The online world plays by a different set of rules to the real one, and if Wikipedia doesn’t realise this soon then it might as well give up covering online communities and websites.

Ale_Jrb: Delete – WP:NFCC#10a – the copyright holder cannot be identified. WP:NFCC isn’t randomly optional for some images, and as the creator of the image cannot be identified, it doesn’t matter what it’s of. Ale_Jrb

And it goes on and on.

This is a very relevant debate to Wikipedia policy and is best summed up by Stormfin in saying ‘[...] to the blinkered view fostered by WP Policy it *must* have a copyright. Which it doesn’t‘.

In my opinion what is missing from this debate (and by extension from the Wikipedia policy) is the issue of intent. Copyright[8], by its very nature, comes with a specific intent on the part of the owner to protect its claim to content that it has produced. In the case of Anonymous the intent, the principle founding idea, is to, as identifiable natural persons, not lay claim to or be held accountable for anything that they do or produce. The Wikipedia policy does not make provision for this: intent to remain anonymous.
To Wikipedia, keep the frickin image. Anonymous has no will, no hunger or identity – but it never forgets. And Wikipedia just cannot deal with that.

Several blogs have reported on plans by the Westboro Baptist Church(famous for GodHatesFags.com[1]) to picket the memorial service for Heath Ledger. They even produced a flier. I’m not sure whether the picket did go ahead, but the point is that they are protesting him for being a ‘fag enabler’ for his role in Brokeback Mountain.
For those who do not know the Westbo Baps, they are a bunch of lunatics from Topeka, Kansas. In the words of Wikipedia, they condemn lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBT), Roman Catholics, Muslims and Jews, as well as populations it believes are supporting the forementioned groups, including Swedes, Canadians, Irish, British, and Americans.. It is their belief that all disasters/tragedies/problems in the world can be attributed to society’s condolence of homosexuality in that these are all results of God’s punishment for tolerating homosexuals. Their MO is to protest by means of picketing with slogans that are meant to shock and offend.

Hate

The family that hates together stays together

Hating for God out in the cold

Hating for God out in the rain

And so the Heath Ledger tie-in is obvious. He enabled fags(probably was one himself) and this here funeral sho’ will generate a mighty amount of media.
This is also not the first time that the Westbo’s have taken their unique form of Christianity to funerals. In 2006 they picketed the funeral of Matthew Snyder. The Snyder family sued for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The defendants were eventually found guilty on the latter two charges and damages totalling some $10million awarded to the family. All ends well then, the balance of the universe restored and fag haters hated upon by the just and decent court, right? Well, not so fast there dude.

In his instructions to the jury U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett stated that the First Amendment protection of free speech has limits, including vulgar, offensive and shocking statements, and that the jury must decide “whether the defendant’s actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection”. [...] also [in another case - Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire - ] certain personal slurs and obscene utterances by an individual were found unworthy of First Amendment protection, due to the potential for violence resulting from their utterance.

Unworthy of First Amendment protection. The US generally holds the First Amendment to be the best thing since wooden false teeth and the crowning glory of their democracy. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have to say, you’ll always have the First Amendment[2]. But lo! you don’t. If your statements are extreme and outrageous they might be deemed so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection. An obvious problem, then – what qualifies as extreme and outrageous? Well, it seems that a jury of your peers will decide. And their concept of extreme might include anything from statements of very strong blasphemy to aggressive racial hatred. And what qualifies as statements that have a potential for violence resulting from their utterance? But what is pertinent here is that this concept of extreme includes, in the case of the Snyder family, verbal attacks on people in a state of severe emotional distress.

This is an problem for anarchism – not that it cares about the US constitution or how it is interpreted by the US judiciary. Emma Goldman wrote Free speech, means either the unlimited right of expression, or nothing at all. The moment any man or set of men can limit speech, it is no longer free. It follows that she would have supported the Westboro crew’s right to spit their hate at the Snyder family and that if the cops were to attempt to prevent the Westboro picket she would be right there with the haters shouting down the cops. But is that fair and equal treatment for the family of the deceased? In my opinion there is an aspect to coercion here as well. The foundation of anarchism is the rejection of all authority and all coercion (whether physical, psychological or emotional). Is the Westboro picket coercive? Well, it’s not coercive in the sense that it does not try to force(coerce) the targets of the picket to do anything against their will[3]. But I do think that it is coercive in that it unduly crushes the spirit of another person, coerces them into despair.

So what would be the anarchist thing to do? Here’s my opinion (which I feel clunky about giving since I am only an observer in this situation and not committed to any action on it). Firstly, obviously, the Westboro Baptist church should have the right to picket and say whatever they want, no matter how hateful or personally and viciously hurtful it is. No-one has the right to prevent them from doing that[4]. Secondly, if the authorities were to try to shut down the picket I would have to side with the Westbo’s in keeping the picket going. But, most importantly, my sensibility would have to – must – picket in opposition to the Westbo’s and in compassion with the family. This is the key, my understanding of anarchism is that the Westboro church should be allowed to picket and shout whatever obscenities and accusations they want, but not without opposition. And that opposition should not be in the form of louder or more aggressive shouting back at the Westboro assholes but in the form of quiet and genuine support and respect for the Ledger family’s grief and their right to a dignified memorial and funeral.

[1] I was wondering whether I should link out to them – not that my one little inbound link would boost their google rank, but still. Yes, they are morons, but it would be unfair to not link to them when I always do link to the idiots in my other posts.
[2] And the second, the right to bear arms. There is no other commandment greater than these.
[3] other than to repent their perceived sins
[4] anything less and I wouldn’t be able to claim the right to busk outside my local church on a Sunday morning with an acoustic guitar singing Crass’s Asylum.

Dsclaimer: the facts of this story are totally ripped from another source

This is fantastic!
It’s massively parallel, free[1], egalitarian and faster than a speeding bullet. When will people learn that the fastest way to spread a piece of information across the internet it to try to have it banned?

Digg.com recently had a story posted about an HD-DVD encryption key: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0.
The AACS LA sent a takedown notice to Digg who stuck the following on their blog:

We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights. In order to respect these rights and to comply with the law, we have removed postings of the key that have been brought to our attention.
…
Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information – and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down.

Here’s the fantastic part, the response from the Digg users was to start posting thousands of stories containing the key, nearly bringing Digg grinding to a halt in a rockin’ display of the Streisand Effect.
The following soon appeared on the Digg blog:

Today was an insane day… After seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

By now the internet is saturated with the infamous number and the AACS LA have had their asses handed to them by the little guy.

May you live in interesting times.

Of course this is not the first time that trying to prevent the publication of a DVD-related hack on the internet has caused its rampant multiplication.
Way back in 1999[2] DVD Jon and two others posted DeCSS, a DVD descrambler. The DVD CCA, the AACS LA for the DVD-era, were granted an injunction prohibiting the publication of the source code. The result was emphatic. Before you could say multi-zone-DVD-player the source code had blasted its way across the internet in numerous forms including images of the code, t-shirts, english descriptions of the code, a haiku poem and dramatic readings.

What makes the Digg action different is not the speed at which a ‘banned’ item spread across the internet in protest, it’s the way in which the protest started. What happened at Digg was that the users of Digg essentially hijacked the site by flooding it with the HD-DVD key.
The big thing about web 2.0[3] is that its lifeblood is user contributions, community involvement. This means that the users of a site such as Digg can, in protest, take control of that site in a totally unregulated way. There is no organising comittee that decides to bomb Digg – if there is enough groundswell support for an idea it becomes unstoppable[4].
And the Digg administrators must have realised this, control of the site doesn’t belong to them anymore.

I can’t wait to see how the internet will surprise and confound me next!

Update: Boing-Boing reports that the number of pages carrying the AACS LA key is now at 368,000 – up from 36,000 a day ago.

[1] in both senses of the word
[2] remember the Millenium Bug? !!!
[3] which, as we all know, is dead and over and has been surpassed by web 3.0
[4] this is anarchism at its best, an idea that spreads from person to person and becomes unstoppable by the sheer number of individuals that are in agreement about it.