No, we won’t question the patriotism of Jack Valenti at the Motion Picture Association of America. He’s the Johnson aide who slept better during the Vietnam war because LBJ was in the White House. Just the same, Valenti and his friends like Hiliary Rosen of the RIAA might want to consider the damage to national security that they are doing with their unceasing war against hackers and the rest of the Net.

Hackers and free-spirited sharers of files are the Viet Cong to people like Valenti and Rosen. Both depict themselves as upholders of civilization in cyberspace. And yet here’s the RIAA smiling at a proposal that would allow copyright holders to mount attacks on illegal file-sharing sites–undoubtedly a ‘tude shared by Valenti. What an efficient way for Americans and their copyright laws to lose respect on the Net and turn more hackers and others against us. Like it or not, the big-time copyright interests and their bought politicians are doing the work of America’s enemies. Valenti and Rosen are the new Ugly Americans of cyberspace, the equivalent of the our political leaders who destroyed Vietnamese villages to “save” them. In fact, if lobbyists and obliging “public” officials keep trashing the Net, then even some secular hackers overseas may feel like joining forces with our al Qaeda enemies–as cybermercenaries.

Lest you think these issues are academic, keep in mind that according to a story in today’s Washington Post, al Qaeda’s thugs would love to find hackers to use the Net to wreak havoc on the U.S. infrastructure. Dam gates might open to flood and kill thousands, and air traffic control systems might stop working. While Valenti and Rosen will correctly think that it’s a long way from sabotaging P2P sites to letting jumbo jets smack into each other, this distinction may be lost on future recruits for al Qaeda and cybermercenaries who just might see this all as one big video game of a jihad.

Here’s a suggestion for Valenti and Rosen. Aren’t many movies marketed these days according to the whims of focus groups? Maybe Valenti and Rosen need focus groups to identify the intellectual property models with which young people feel the most comfortable. A TeleRead-style national digital library approach, offering fair payment to content providers while staying as true as possible to the Carnegie model, just might win out.

An aside: I myself hate the corruption of the word “hacker.” It used to mean people who loved to explore the innards of computers, rather than stealing or destroying. Anti-kudoos to the big media for blurring the distinction between hackers and, say, “crackers.”

NO COMMENTS

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.