[pp.int.general] Open letter to Anonymous (please distribute)

[Antonio Garcia]

These are problems we are always going to face because we believe everybody 
deserves the same fair chance in life, no matter what environment he simply can 
not choose to be born into, and only taking notice of what effort of those available 
to him he chooses to try to make things better for all.

In a certain sense, Anonymous presents a framework where anybody, no matter 
what his skill level be, can contribute in a simple way he can understand towards 
changing things. Breaking unjust laws should not be a crime, just like leaking info 
on crimes (Bradley Manning) should not be a crime.

Every day we can see how powerful, almost certainly guilty people, evade the 
action of justice through legal tricks and tailored legislation... making formal 
justice into the universal laughing stock it often is... this certainly has an effect 
on those that have the aim to fight injustice, pushing some into retaliation 
tactics and "catch me if you can" strategies. The intentional download of 
copyright-protected works can be seen as such a retaliation strategy... easy to 
perpetrate, costly to root out legally... thus we bleed the enemies resources, 
and it seems they get annoyed... so it works. Contributing to DDoS strikes follows 
the same pattern.

It might not be the right thing to do from an absolute ethical point of view, but 
it is an effective action within the reach of many who do not know/have no 
access to other alternatives within their reach to contribute towards the overall 
effort of giving our opponents as hard a time as we can while we find the 
ultimate effective and perfectly clean strategy to break their defense lines.

Would you refuse to be saved by a pirate after a wreckage just because with his 
wooden leg, long sword and black patch over his eye he is not the kind of guy you 
would give a hand if you crossed him under less pressing circumstances?

Pirates and Anonymous are temporary loose allies, at least because they both 
have more urgent things to do than critisizing eachothers actions and motives.
Some of the things they do serve us well, some of the things we do serve them 
well, and together, even when not mixed, we have a greater impact than each 
on our own.

Of course, Anonymous makes mistakes which have effects, and so do we.

That is what being human is all about, making mistakes and learning not to 
repeat them stupidly, improving action for the next wave of efforts.

And surely, we all need to improve!


NingúnOtro.

> Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2011 01:10:33 +0200
> From: tourovski at gmail.com
> To: pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Open letter to Anonymous (please distribute)
> 
> Ahoi,
> 
> > These people break the laws we are trying to change. We don't have to
> > support them but we have to admit that they are our shadow, that we
> > move together not because of an agreement but because we react to the
> > same things. We don't obey them, they don't obey us. But we hit the
> > same targets : where we protest, they are attacking.
> There are different ways of "attacking" and breaking the laws.
> Considering copyright for example, there are people who break DRM or
> develop secure filesharing protocols, and there are those who hack
> customer databases and spread private data of innocent users all over
> the internet. I would like the Pirate parties to make this kind of
> differentiation instead of making general statements like "hacking is
> good / hacking is bad".
> 
> > That may look like a dramatization, but a lot of things in the 21st
> > century will depend on the stance the world takes toward this
> > "intellectual property" mess. It is more than just about culture : it
> > encompasses science and technology through patents and copyrights on
> > designs, agriculture through property rights on crops species, and
> > medicine on the generic drugs issues.
> I'm most surely no fan of bashing everyone who mentions "intellectual
> property" but in this case you've run into the trap posed by this
> terminology. There is no unified "intellectual property" problem, but
> rather a number of very different legal fields (both regarding their
> aims and the design of the laws) and it's not at all helpful to confuse
> things such as copyright, patents and designs.
> 
> Best regards,
> Boris
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
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