As we have been covering in the last couple of weeks, a controversial EU
Copyright Directive has been under discussion at the European
Parliament, and in a surprising turn of events, it voted to reject fast-tracking the tabled proposal by the JURI Committee which contained controversial proposals, particularly in Art 11 and Art 13. The proposed Directive will now get a full discussion and debate in plenary in September.
I say surprising because for those of us who have been witnesses (and
participants) to the Copyright Wars for the last 20 years, such a defeat
of copyright maximalist proposals is practically unprecedented, perhaps
with the exception of SOPA/PIPA.
For years we’ve had a familiar pattern in the passing of copyright
legislation: a proposal has been made to enhance protection and/or
restrict liberties, a small group of ageing millionaire musicians would
be paraded supporting the changes in the interest of creators. Only
copyright nerds and a few NGOs and digital rights advocates would
complain, their opinions would be ignored and the legislation would pass
unopposed. Rinse and repeat.
But something has changed, and a wide coalition has managed to defeat
powerful media lobbies for the first time in Europe, at least for now.
How was this possible?
The main change is that the media landscape is very different thanks to
the Internet. In the past, the creative industries were monolithic in
their support for stronger protection, and they included creators,
corporations, collecting societies, publishers, and distributors; in
other words the gatekeepers and the owners were roughly on the same
side. But the Internet brought a number of new players, the tech
industry and their online platforms and tools became the new
gatekeepers. Moreover, as people do not buy physical copies of their
media and the entire industry has moved towards streaming, online
distributors have become more powerful. This has created a perceived
imbalance, where the formerly dominating industries need to negotiate
with the new gatekeepers for access to users. This is why creators
complain about a value gap between what they perceive they should be getting, and what they actually receive from the giants.
The main result of this change from a political standpoint is that now
we have two lobbying sides in the debate, which makes all the difference
when it comes to this type of legislation. In the past, policymakers
could ignore experts and digital rights advocates because they never had
the potential to reach them, letters and articles by academics were not
taken into account, or given lip service during some obscure committee
discussion just to be hidden away. Tech giants such as Google have
provided lobbying access in Brussels, which has at least leveled the
playing field when it comes to presenting evidence to legislators.
As a veteran of the Copyright Wars, I have to admit that it has been
very entertaining reading the reaction from the copyright industry lobby
groups and their individual representatives, some almost going
apoplectic with rage at Google’s intervention. These tend to be the same
people who spent decades lobbying legislators to get their way
unopposed, representing large corporate interests unashamedly and
passing laws that would benefit only a few, usually to the detriment of
users. It seems like lobbying must be decried when you lose.
But to see this as a victory for Google and other tech giants completely
ignores the large coalition that shares the view that the proposed
Articles 11 and 13 are very badly thought-out, and could represent a
real danger to existing rights. Some of us have been fighting this fight
when Google did not even exist, or it was but a small competitor of
AltaVista, Lycos, Excite and Yahoo!
At the same time that more restrictive copyright legislation came into
place, we also saw the rise of free and open source software, open
access, Creative Commons and open data. All of these are legal hacks
that allow sharing, remixing and openness. These were created precisely
to respond to restrictive copyright practices. I also remember how they
were opposed as existential threats by the same copyright industries,
and treated with disdain and animosity. But something wonderful
happened, eventually open source software started winning (we used to
buy operating systems), and Creative Commons became an important part of
the Internet’s ecosystem by propping-up valuable common spaces such as
Wikipedia.
Similarly, the Internet has allowed a great diversity of actors to
emerge. Independent creators, small and medium enterprises, online
publishers and startups love the Internet because it gives them access
to a wider audience, and often they can bypass established gatekeepers.
Lost in this idiotic “Google v musicians” rhetoric has been the threat
that both Art 11 and 13 represent to small entities. Art 11 proposes a
new publishing right that has been proven to affect smaller players in
Germany and Spain; while Art 13 would impose potentially crippling
economic restrictions to smaller companies as they would have to put in
place automated filtering systems AND redress mechanisms against
mistakes. In fact, it has been often remarked that Art 13 would benefit
existing dominant forces, as they already have filtering in place (think
ContentID).
Similarly, Internet advocates and luminaries see the proposals as a
threat to the Internet, the people who know the Web best think that this
is a bad idea. If you can stomach it, read this thread featuring
a copyright lobbyist attacking Neil Gaiman, who has been one of the
Internet celebrities that have voiced their concerns about the
Directive.
Even copyright experts who almost never intervene in digital rights affairs the have been vocal in their opposition to the changes.
And finally we have political representatives from various parties and
backgrounds who have been vocally opposed to the changes. While the
leader of the political opposition has been the amazing Julia Reda, she
has managed to bring together a variety of voices from other parties and
countries. The vitriol launched at her has been unrelenting, but
futile. It has been quite a sight to see her opponents both try to
dismiss her as just another clueless young Pirate commanded by Google,
while at the same time they try to portray her as a powerful enemy in
charge of the mindless and uninformed online troll masses ready to do
her bidding.
All of the above managed to do something wonderful, which was to convey
the threat in easy-to-understand terms so that users could contact their
representatives and make their voice heard. The level of popular
opposition to the Directive has been a great sight to behold.
Tech giants did not create this alliance, they just gave various voices
access to the table. To dismiss this as Google’s doing completely
ignores the very real and rich tapestry of those defending digital
rights, and it is quite clearly patronizing and insulting, and precisely
the reason why they lost. It was very late until they finally realized
that they were losing the debate with the public, and not even the
last-minute deployment of musical dinosaurs could save the day.
But the fight continues, keep contacting your MEPs and keep applying pressure.
[Image description: Tweet: “I know Seeking Power is the Hip Villain Thing to do, but I periodically question dark lord priorities, bc the idea of being in charge of EVEN MORE STUFF than I already am makes me want to lie down & die, whereas I’d prob sacrifice babies to blood gods for a sabbatical?
New tweet: “sure, you could rule the galaxy, but you could also nap for a million hours, & one of those options would involve way fewer meetings, I’m just saying, Lord God-King McBroods-a-Lot”
New tweet: “…every time a villain’s like ‘I SHALL COMMAND MILLIONS’ I’m like, ‘bitch, you ever so much as led like a 6-person team? YOU DON’T WANT TO MULTIPLY THAT NUMBER. TRUST. THE CONFERENCE CALLS WILL NEVER END.”
Reply: “LISTEN! Folks WILL reply all!!! You don’t want this. I really questioned Hela on this point.”
Reply: “OMG YES. like, girl, if you really want to punish your brothers, put them in charge of mandatory meetings through lunch that could as easily be a 3-line email, tell them they’re responsible for ‘Asgardian team building,’ & peace out before 5″]
[Image: A tweet from @akatookey, which reads: “funzies tip for my friends with medical debt; when collectors hound you, demand an itemized invoice.
If they don’t give you one, you have grounds to contest the debt.
If they do give you one, someone violated HIPAA and you can contest the debt.“]
Now here is some ding-danged useful information! Another user pointed out that over half of small debt collectors lack this information because they buy their debts in bulk for cheap and in return get really disorganized paperwork. They encourage folks to look up “debt validation letter” online to get more information on this.
Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?
So the footage of Owen training the tiny raptors in the new Jurassic World kind of (inadvertently, I think) confirmed something that always bugged me about the social dynamics mentioned in the first film.
Owen’s using the term ‘alpha’ wrong.
Of course, the concept of pack alphas is rooted in a lot of erroneous studies anyway. But if we take his actual assertions about it and Blue’s behaviour at face value, then Owen is wrong. He’s not the alpha. Blue is the alpha. The pack follows her cues, that’s why they go with her when she decides to follow the Indominous, and it’s also why they listen to Owen – because Blue does. If Blue stops, so do the other raptors. They’d don’t just wait it out to see who’ll win, they immediately follow Blue’s lead.
Blue’s the leader.
Owen is, actually, the mediator.
He is the one who stops disputes between the raptors and defuses tense situations. He is permitted this status precisely because he’s physically weak (compared to raptors) but socially important. His social importance was created by rearing the raptors and forming emotional bonds with them. But they know full well that he’s squishy and beatable (though they probably don’t realize just how lethal some behaviours might be for him, comparatively). Blue knows she can kill Owen and that Owen is not strong or very useful at leadership decisions for a velociraptor pack. She accepts his input because he’s dad.
So since Owen actually isn’t even in the running for pack leader, and challenging him would be pointless because then you’d just hurt him and cost the pack a socially important member, and also probably get beaten up by Blue, he is the ideal mediator of disputes. His intervention de-escalates situations by reducing the amount of violence that’s permissible.
But because he was using so much containment and physical force (even if it was through equipment, obviously) to keep the raptors in check, I think Owen misjudged his placement in the raptor social group. Especially since he actually was tougher than them when they were babies. He thought they listened to him because they believed he was stronger than them, and that this was an illusion he had to maintain.
That was never actually the case, though. Blue knew Owen was way weaker than her the whole time. She just valued him anyway.
There’s probably a metaphor about toxic masculinity in there somewhere.
You had me until the last line.
Would it still work for you if you removed “toxic”?
Nope. One bloke misunderstanding his social role in a group of bloodthirsty, primitive monsters is not a good or accurate metaphor for men.
Not a good one for women either if we’re the aggressive monsters, hmm?
Actually, what I was alluding to was the concept of Owen fixating on the assumption that he had to protect his social position via force and a misrepresentation of his own physical power, as having some allegorical similarities to masculine expectations of leadership and authority.
It’s not so much that he misunderstands his role in the social group that’s relevant, but why.
And that doesn’t actually require that the raptors be allegorical stand-ins for women. Because the dynamics of or composition of that social group is irrelevant, the salient point with regards to the toxic masculinity quip is Owen’s preconceptions about authority in the animal kingdom.
But, if we do want to look at the raptors as an allegory for women, it’s still not all bad. Because one of the major themes of the Jurassic Park movies is that the dinosaurs are not monsters. The monsters are the scientists and businessmen who seek to profit from their existence, who have made them, manipulated them, fenced them in, etc..
The reason why the dinosaurs are a problem in the movies is because they break free of the confines constructed around them, and then it’s no longer just about what the humans want, but about what the dinosaurs will do. And the messages of the movies, overall, is that responsibility still lies with the people who built the cages and manipulated the living things into forms and shapes they found pleasing, not with the creatures who then proceeded to liberate themselves.
But that’s a bit more of a stretch.
Still, that’s why I was deliberately vague with that last line. There’s always more than one way to read a story. Or piece of meta, as it happens.
Frankenuff’s Castle 