conversations

the internet wars

Aaron Swartz , the computer programmer and internet freedom activist, was accused of breaking into MIT’s computer system in order to access academic articles and make them available for free on the Internet. He faced a 35-year prison sentence on federal data-theft charges and a fine of up to $1 million for illegally downloading articles from the subscription-based academic research service JSTOR.

Glenn Greenwald argues that the pursuit of Aaron Swartz, the computer programmer and internet freedom activist, committed suicide in New York at the age of 26 is part of the war over how the internet is used and who controls the information that flows on it. He says that Swartz's real crime in the eyes of the US government was:

challenging its authority and those of corporate factions to maintain a stranglehold on that information. In that above-referenced speech on SOPA, Swartz discussed the grave dangers to internet freedom and free expression and assembly posed by the government's efforts to control the internet with expansive interpretations of copyright law and other weapons to limit access to information.

The method used was unrestrained prosecutorial abuse. Greenwards adds that:

There is a particular overzealousness when it comes to internet activism because the internet is one of the few weapons - perhaps the only one - that can be effectively harnessed to galvanize movements and challenge the prevailing order. That's why so much effort is devoted to destroying the ability to use it anonymously - the Surveillance State - and why there is so much effort to punishing as virtual Terrorists anyone like Swartz who uses it for political activism or dissent.

As Danah Boyd says the federal government's agents used their power to silence him and publicly condemn him even before the trial even began.

Rolling Stones: Stripped

Stripped. It's an interpretation of the unplugged format as it is made with no overdubs.

The cover photo depicting a lean, determined, leather-clad combo in classic and white black and white. The music was patched together from tour rehearsals and live club dates in Paris and Amsterdam released in 1995 during the Voodoo Lounge Tour. The album was digitally remastered and re-issued in 2009.

The music doesn't live up to the promise of the cover. The best pieces are those of the Stones sitting around and casually playing their songs without hype or fireworks.

public-access space v public space

Saskia Sassen in Public Interventions. The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition in SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain says that:

We are living through a kind of crisis in public space resulting from the growing commercialization, theme-parking, and privatizing of public space. The grand monumentalized public spaces of the state and the crown, especially in former imperial capitals, dominate our experience of public space. [This is a] period marked by the ascendance of private authority/power over spaces once considered public.

She adds that furthermore, over the last five years especially, the state has sought to weaponize urban space and to make it an object of surveillance. At the same time, the increasing legibility of restrictions, surveillance and displacements is politicizing urban space.

Most familiar, perhaps, is the impact of high-income residential and commercial gentrification, which generates a displacement that can feed the making of a political subjectivity centered in contestation rather than a sense of the civic on either side of the conflict. The physical displacement of low-income households, non-profit uses and low-profit neighbourhood firms makes visible a power relationship – direct control by one side over the other as expressed directly in evictions or indirectly through the market.

She reminds us to not confuse public-access space with public space. The latter requires making – through the practices and the subjectivities of people. Through their practices, users of the space wind up making diverse kinds of publicness.