I have two bees, one bonnet.
The first bee.
The #nocleanfeed debate / rage is up and running full fury. Thanks to a government that appears to want to ruin some of the freedoms, which have been fought for so strongly over time. I hate the idea very much!
I understand the rage and the well thought out arguments about why this filter is ridiculous, and ultimately will not work. I agree it is a waste of money and I wholeheartedly agree that we as parents should be looking after or own kids thank you nicely. I want to be responsible to bring up my kids correctly and I want you to be too.
Then there is this wee sticking point.
And frankly, it is my second bee (it has been a first bee for a number of years).
You see if we want governments and regulators to stay out of our lives as much as possible then we need to make sure we play the game the way we all want it to be played.
We seem to have huge moral indignation about what we want to be able to access on the web, but alas, our internet masses have no problem stealing from others at the same time.
Yes it happens. You probably have done it this year. Maybe this week. But at some point we all have done it.
You have stolen from someone else, because you felt you could and that you could get away with it simply because these days it is easy and simple and is damn hard to police.
But the how, where and what simply don’t matter! Do they?
Do you believe that it is ok for your kids and your partner to steal from others?
It is a yes / no question.
By the way, ask your mother if it is ok if you steal from someone. Go on. Seriously, will it be as comfortable then?
In my opinion, theft is one of those simple things that is a no. You just do not take what someone else owns. You leave their things alone. Yes, I may sound like some sort of do-gooder. I have done it. I stopped doing it. I make sure my kids realise it is simply wrong. Like a reformed smoker I look back now and know ‘that it is just wrong’. It does not stop my opinion from counting though.
If you take something that you do not own, and use it without paying for it , irrespective of what it is, and do not have the owners’ permission for it, no method of justification of how wrong the product distribution model is, or how expensive it is matters.
You DO NOT own it, thus you stole it. I have not seen much lending done by these providers of late.
If you don’t purchase it, you should well leave it alone.
- So why do you pirate music and movies.
- Why do you use hack software and games?
- Why do you hack into someone’s wifi?
Really – I can see you rolling your eyes.
I have had this debate numerous times. Since when did accessibility to something make it less of a crime? When did your disgust in the price or value proposition make it any less of a crime?
It doesn’t. If you don’t like the model, change the law. Change the business. If you don’t like how much the movie costs, or the album or the game, you have a choice. Do not buy it. If no one buys it, the distributor is forced to change their model. There is no written right that says you have a right to everything made on this planet. You need to stop expecting you can just have everything.
You see I want a new Harley. I do. But I don’t have the cash for it, nor do I want to borrow money to buy it. So I PUT OFF my instant want mentality because for me to walk in and take it and ride away without paying is most likely to end up with me getting locked up, oh and did I mention it is just wrong. The issue sis it is much harder to take than to pirate a movie. In principle though both are exactly the same.
So what is the correlation to our internet feed?
It is tenuous at best. However, the principle issue here is – Why are you so trustworthy in determining what comes down the pipe when you are so willing to break the law regularly to satisfy your other demands. Why is one of society’s values more or less important than another? If you want control, maybe you (and me) need to clean up our backyards first, and then go all out to make sure our rights are protected.
Why should we not have a nanny state when so many are blatantly teaching their kids to steal from others? Why not let them control us if we really want to selectively control what is important or not?
Listen up! I do not want a nanny state!
But every day I see so called thought leaders, social media gurus and marketeers listing how they download this, copy that and show so many ways to circumvent the ownership of other peoples properties.
And then I see them spouting about the value of this community and these rights. I see them fight for their hourly rates and bleat about how their employers’ products are worth value and being undervalued by uneducated people.
Since when did other employers not earn the same right to protect their businesses, and pay their staff wages. If you want it for free turn up for free. If we all work for free then everything can be free. Can’t it?
Get off the high horse, unless you are prepared to bring your ethics to everything you do.
- Not just the convenient ones.
- Not just the easy and popular trending ones.
And in case you are wondering. That means me too.
Well that is what ireckon anyway.
Oh, and it is the same for every free drink you get from an employee at a bar, every pen or bandage etc you bring home from work (whatever job you have). The thing is there is no free.
Remember that. Someone is paying for it.
Very well said – I agree completely. People seem to think it’s okay to take from others as long as no-one takes from them.
It’s not just about the ‘stealing’ (downloading etc) it’s also about morals, child pornography etc – which you touched on in the 2nd paragraph.
I’ve touched on this myself with kids and the internet and programs that can be used to stop access to ‘areas’ we don;t want our children having access to.
You’ve written this well – unfortunately – I think the horse has already bolted – although there is hope in the Senate – we can only hope.
Thank-you for a very interesting article
This is a great post! I love that you’ve shifted the boundaries of this debate.
I think the link you’ve drawn between illegal activities and the “clean feed” is very tenuous. They are unrelated and the “clean feed” will not do anything to address the illegal activities you’ve mentioned in your article. And neither should it. As you hint, it’s really up to us to police ourselves. The ethics involved are straight forward, and I don’t disagree with you on that (although I desperately want you to be wrong!). But to frame this as something we should be discussing at the same time as the clean feed is nonsense.
Should we also bring up the last time we jaywalked, or crept over the speed limit or parked in a no standing zone? Didn’t pay a library fine? It’s all very well and good to lead honest lives free of all illegal activities, but how it has ANY bearing on the clean feed debate I just cannot see! The clean feed is ostensibly to “protect’ us from kiddy porn and other unmentionables, the argument is that the scheme is rife with technical problems that have not been properly addressed, and the system is ripe for exploitation. Whether we as individuals are individually morally upright is a red herring. It’s like arguing that it’s fine to have government cameras watching us in our houses because some people shoplift. By framing the debate like this, you are arguing the Government is right to continue until we all get our act together, which since the human race first walked on land we have shown is just not going to happen.
This would be a fine piece on its own, without any talk of the clean feed debate. I fear by putting the two arguments together you are diminishing the issues at stake.
Josh yes as I admitted it is very tenuous, the linkage is made only by me, not that it should necessarily be linked in normally. There is the thought though that our imperial leaders feel this way and believe because of all these things we do we cannot be trusted to behave for our self. I do feel there is a degree of moral high ground people are on in the feed debate, and there is a need to say, “can we be selective about our morals”? Does this matter more or less or the same. Ireckon that is the intention of the idea of some loose linkage. That we do bring some review of our moral high grounds in such passionated debates.
I appreciate your comments. I was pretty animated last night
This is something I have also struggled with – trying to explain to people exactly why I am uncomfortable about BitTorrent et al – really, I’d love to watch the whole series of True Blood for free, & if my friend had the box set I’d happily borrow it. But … downloading it in a sneaky roundabout way? It makes me feel gritty. I’d rather pay per episode for it on iTunes than wait for it to hit TV in Australia, so I do that. P2P networking like that is openly marketed, easily blocked.
But is the Australian government’s filter – which is more akin to the Great Firewall of China than I’m entirely comfortable with – technologically adept enough to filter the Deep Web? The completely private, unadvertised, anonymous parts of the Web that villains use to nefarious purpose – are those detected, blocked, shut down? Everything I’ve read says not, which to me suggests that perhaps we’re performing sleight of hand on ourselves.
I don’t think the government has any way to expose the man behind the curtain, so the rest of us will have to suffer the inconvenience & frustration of an inadequate & badly designed system. Sort of like teaching dictation software not to type “work” when you say “walk”.