This is the civil rights battle of the 21st century | Hacker News Reader

This is the civil rights battle of the 21st century

andrewluetgers.com

7 pointslootsauce5 comments

The new avant-garde is made of hackers, amateurs, makers, DIYers and entrepreneurs. If only we all knew how revolutionary and politically charged what we do really is.

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I don’t like censorship as much as the next guy, but to compare PIPA/SOPA to the Civil Rights movement is insulting.

Don’t get me wrong this is important, but it’s not in the same boat as destroying the toxic thinking “you’re not as much of a person as I am”

I lumped SOPA/PIPA together with the arab spring and OWS, its a broader discussion. But to address SOPA/PIPA, I do consider freedom of speech a pretty important civil liberty, the bills literally wanted to achieve the same level of control that Libya and China have over the internet. Now consider how essential these tools are for political action, how they empower individuals. There will be an ongoing battle to determine who controls that power. It IS a civil liberty issue and I believe it is going to be THE defining struggle for this century.

Possibly true, but general to the point that it's difficult to know how to respond. Are big things happening? Definitely. But this sort of thing isn't driven just by changing minds, like the civil rights movement of the 60's. The future has to be invented as well as protected.

It would probably be easier, saner, and more clear-headed to take things piece by piece. SOPA was wrong, and we're all glad it's dead. It seems the attention of many people is turning towards the political process, whether that's manifested in OWS, Rootstrikers, aggressive pro-Internet legislation efforts like @spolsky suggests, or just electing Ron Paul and seeing what happens. Great! But keep it modular, present, and practical. People's attention and faith are limited resources, and they can be wasted by asking them for too much too soon.

The tech community is not a group of political people, we're too busy making things. But we've been forced into this position by epic stupidity and greed. Your points are well taken but the fact of the matter is we need to rise to this occasion and take responsibility for our world. No one else will do it for us. If that sounds to hard to people dont cry on my shoulder when it gets old or uninteresting, we need to stop being a bunch of easily distracted meme-junkies and actually get motivated by something other than bite sized chunks of internet candy. Have a mission, get committed. The best way I can imagine to do that is to form a unified front, a self identified group that have a good clear understanding of a generational struggle. And that's what this is. The civil rights for 21st century story basically summed that up for me I guess.

Right to download illegal content? Here I was thinking it was gay rights...

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