Privacy and Piracy

Privacy is an interesting thing.
If you've ever wondered just how exposed you truly are, go ahead and Google your own name sometime. It's remarkably disturbing, the things that pop up. I guess, since I have two different social networking accounts and a blog, I should be used to it.
So, if I'm all over the Internet (not really, but for argument's sake), then how much of my information actually belongs to me? The art I post on Facebook, the words I write here, do those still belong to me? Are they mine, and mine alone, or do they now belong to the world?
The same question applies to any other form of media. If an artist releases a video on, say, YouTube, does it really still belong to that artist? Does a song still belong to the musician after it's bought and paid for online? Or is it public property, free to be distributed at the leisure of the users?
I cannot help but feel that the Internet has caused art to head towards the latter, rather than the former. But is that really such a bad thing? If a person cannot share your art with others, in any way, does that promote your name? What benefit do you have from keeping your work bottled? While royalties might produce some income, I feel it's safe to say actual performances and appearances are more profitable. If notoriety increases your worth, isn't it more beneficial for you to gain popularity in any way possible?
People who share music do not claim to have created the song, nor do they claim to be the artist. That is where I feel a line should be drawn- I'm not opposed to the sharing of art and media, but I am opposed to plagiarism. If I saw my writing on another site, I would be flattered- until someone claims those words as his or her own.
But how does anyone enforce something like this, except on a case-by-case basis? There is no foolproof way to verify the creator of something, unless their rights to the creation are enforced absolutely. This, however, is an impossible feat- the Internet is far too large for an entity to monitor everything equally.
I suppose this is the motivation for Congress's latest, sad attempt to do such policing. In this proposed piece of legislature, the users would become the police, reporting websites they personally deem in violation of vague copyright laws. This bill, however, gives law enforcers the ability to shut down access to reported websites without the due process that has served as a cornerstone of our judicial system.
The bill is so poorly-written, so vague, that it can only serve to harm the free flow of information over the Internet. Giving a government agency permission to condemn any reported website so blatantly violates freedom of speech.
I guess the question here is whether access to the Internet is a right or not. On the one hand, it is a channel for people to express themselves. On the other, however, there is no such thing as free Internet- we are required to pay some company in order to gain access. Is it our right to make ourselves more vulnerable, to give away information about ourselves, or is it a privilege to do so? If being on the Internet means that we give up certain parts of ourselves, would information such as music and art not also fall under this truth? Don't artists give up their right to absolute control when they choose to be a part of the Internet?
These are questions that are not about to be answered on my blog, or any blog. It is entirely possible that there are no answers, that the best we can do is come to an agreement on how to handle the Internet. However, the current approach is outdated and dangerous; we cannot use arcane methods to deal with such a modern problem. We need a modern solution.

Thoughts on the 99%

After a man died at the Occupy Salt Lake City camp (a mixture of carbon monoxide poisoning and drug overdose is the current theory), our mayor ordered the camp closed. They arrested about twenty people, and they used a bulldozer to take down the tents.

A bulldozer. To take down a few tents. A piece of equipment that probably costs thousands and thousands of dollars to insure and maintain, and they used it on some Coleman tents and cardboard lean-tos. They wasted thousands of dollars, taxpayer dollars, to make a show of force.

In other places, the police have arrested and/or beaten everyone from Iraq war vets to retired state Supreme Court justices. They took the press badges from any reporters trying to cover the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. This is in the same country that's made a point of claiming we have "freedom of the press."

What, exactly, is the motivation for these police officers, these supposed upholders of the law, to so blatantly disobey the most significant document in our country? Do they not realize that their pensions were most likely tied up in a stock market that bottomed out because of this "1%" they are now supporting with their actions? Do they not acknowledge that they are a part of this majority being forced to shoulder the burden of debt that others have manufactured? They so easily strike down people my age, and people my parents' age, and people your age. For what? Because they were told to do so? Have they never read the transcripts of the Nuremberg Trials?

Now, I would never go so far as to equate police to Nazis. They are nowhere near the same. This aside, the justification of "being told to do so" has been used time and again as an excuse to commit any number of atrocities.

Of course, a person cannot simply be told to support a movement, even when confronted with any number of facts. No, people will only begin to agree with the Occupy movement when they have made an emotional connection to it.

My connection is simple enough to understand- I was raised by the public education system with the impression that if I worked hard and went to college, life would be set. Now that I'm a year and a half from graduation and thousands of dollars in the hole with student loans, however, prospects seem grim. I worked hard, I paid my damned taxes last year, and yet I'm being asked to not only pay an exorbitant amount of money for my education, but I am also facing the prospect of having social programs I rely on slashed, simply because the richest people in this country do not feel like paying taxes.

Where is the justice in that? More so, where is the democracy? We live in a country with the second-lowest socio-economic mobility of all developed nations on the planet. My being not-rich is not a fault of my own, except that I was born into the wrong family. Because, as much as Herman Cain might protest otherwise, the biggest determining factor in your wealth as an adult is the economic class of your parents. While there certainly are exceptions to this, exceptions do not set the standard.

No, I was raised with the idea that when you earned more money than most people, it was your responsibility to contribute that good fortune back into society. I worked in soup kitchens, I donate money, I volunteer. It is not driven by some moral standard; it is driven by the knowledge that a society heavily-reliant upon its people cannot be successful unless everyone contributes as much as possible. If these rich people are "job creators," where exactly are all the jobs? What have they pumped back into their community?

Being a country run by its own people, for its own people, is a serious responsibility. With the acceptance of being a member of this country, you acknowledge that we need people, of all kinds. If you are unwilling to contribute, get out of this country. When the society as a whole is healthy and provided for, it is more efficient. Jobs do not magically arise out of the ether; rather, they come from necessity. When more people spend money within the system, demand rises. The people most likely to spend a large sum of money in their community are not that mysterious one percent. A person who earns fifty thousand dollars is far more likely to spend almost all of that than a person who earns several million.

Why, then, are people who are statistically part of this "99%" willing to support the other one? Perhaps because the one percent has worked hard to create in the minds of Americans the idea that you, too, can become a part of their exclusive club, as long as you support them. Evidence, of course, would suggest otherwise.

I suppose that what we have here is a massive failure to communicate. The people who believe they can aspire to be rich have been fed these fallacies by the very group they wish to join. They have come to believe the 99% movement is one of "young, self-entitled people," which is entirely untrue (as the name suggests, 99% of the population consists of more than twenty-somethings). They have been told that it is unfair to expect these wealthy people to pay taxes, because they (the wealthy) create jobs that simply are not there.

It is an entire system built on misinformation, and the vast majority of people are tired of it. These backwards stalwarts can either find a legitimate argument against the movement, or they can join it, but those who sit comfortably behind snide commentary like, "McDonald's is hiring" or "I bet they don't even pay taxes" are only destined to make idiots of themselves. They do not have to go down to the camps and join the literal occupation, but they are welcome to contact their representatives, vote against policies maintaining the status quo, and use their money to support those companies and campaigns with which they find common ground. Being a part of this movement is not about being anti-capitalist; it is about making sure that corporations remember who really pays their wages. Capitalism, much like democracy, cannot survive if it alienates the people upon which it relies. Being a part of this movement means you feel the system in which you exist has forgotten you're there. Change is real, and it can happen- look at the mega-banks changing their policies in anticipation of losing customers to credit unions. This isn't about drum circles, or tents, this is about a movement so big, so significant, that it is not restrained by physical boundaries. They have occupied Wall Street, and Los Angeles, and Boise, but they're also occupying blogs, they're occupying news sources, they're occupying Twitter and they're occupying Facebook. They're in multiple countries, they speak multiple languages, they come from different backgrounds. You can choose to be one of them, or you can choose to be surrounded by them.

My name is Meg, and I am a part of the 99%.