[free-sklyarov] WTO and Sklyarov/Adobe/DMCA

[Mike Orr]

On Fri, Jul 20, 2001 at 11:57:23PM -0700, Neale Pickett wrote:
> But we don't want to spoil things for the EFF by protesting anyway.  WTO
> has left a sour taste in our mouth (who can name three issues raised by
> protesters during WTO?  Okay now who can name three kinds of anti-riot
> gear used by police?), so we want to make sure we use our ability to
> protest as a strategic tool, not an end in and of itself.
> 
> This strategy may not work so well in other parts of the country, less
> seasoned by protests gone awry :-)

I don't agree with Neale's negative assessment of the WTO protests, but
I support his position of restraint in the Sklyarov/Adobe/DMCA case.
And maybe--as he says--it's because I was at WTO and WTO II (=the
anniversary), am living with its aftermath, and saw how the (especially
non-local) media misrepresented it and various (local) interests use its
memory for their own ends.  BTW, I'm ambivalent about "free trade" vs
"fair trade", but I'm hopping mad about the DMCA.

I must object to the term "protests gone awry".  Many people in Seattle
feel the WTO protest didn't "go awry": it went just fine, thank you.
The main denouncers are a few boosters wringing their hands over
our "tarnished image as a world-class city", whatever that means.  I
guess it means they can't woo companies here as easily as they used to.
Big deal.  This is not to discount the real negative consequences of the
event: non-protestors being arrested, protesters receiving "excessive
force", and innocent businesses downtown losing money.  But the real
lesson of the WTO protest transcends these unfortunate occurrences and
even the political issues involved.  

The lesson is that ordinary people can make a difference.  20,000 people
attending--and millions of people who didn't--rediscovered the fact that
they are not powerless, that they can make governments and companies
listen to their concerns, and if not force them to do the right thing,
at least force them to give lip service to it or find themselves in an
embarrassing situation.  The whole four days of WTO was worth it just to
see Madeline Albright detained in her hotel for half a day!  Sorry for
the inconvenience, Madeline, but you unwittingly ushered in an age of
public participation in "the system", and that's what the United States
of America is supposed to be about.

But what were the protesters saying and how was it perceived?  This is
why I urge restraint in the current situation.

"Who can name three issues raised by protesters during WTO?  Okay now
who can name three kinds of anti-riot gear used by police?"  This is
exactly right.  All the anti-globalization protests have done a great
job of drawing attention to themselves, but a bad job of drawing
attention to the issues.  And it's not because of a lack of trying:
WTO and WTO II had teach-ins galore (and still do).  It's because the
media likes to report on civil unrest and name-calling, and once that
starts, everything else goes out the window.  80% of the newspaper 
coverage of all the protests the past two years has been about the
outlandish things people did, not about the issues.

Also, remember that the public has much less understanding of DMCA
issues than they do about trade/NAFTA/labor, and our position sounds so
weird and paranoid they are reluctant to accept it.  We must not lose
our historic chance to educate people about the DMCA by degenerating
into an anti-Adobe protest or a protest-for-the-sake-of-protest.

This last point bears repeating.  During both WTO and WTOII, there
were three distinct types of protesters during the day (every day).  In
the daytime, the talk was almost exclusively on
trade/NAFTA/labor/environment, the labor unions were out in force,
and the most ingenious forms of protest took place.  At WTO II, the
protesters presented the mayor with a cake to thank him for bringing the
trade conference to town and thus giving a forum for the protesters to 
state their grievances.  (The irony of course is that the mayor is a 
booster!)  (PS. It wasn't the mayor who initiated the conference.)
Around 5pm, most of those people went home and another type of protester
started arriving, and the rhetoric changed from being mostly about
trade to being mostly about free speech and police excesses.  Then
around 8pm, most of those people went home and a third type of
protester became predominent.  These people were more anti-police than
anything else, and were determined to sit in the intersections until
they were arrested.  It felt like you could ask somebody, "Hey, wasn't
this protest supposed to be about trade?" and they would have responded,
"Trade?  What's trade?"

-- 
-Mike (Iron) Orr, iron at mso.oz.net  (if mail problems: mso at jimpick.com)
   http://iron.cx/     English * Esperanto * Russkiy * Deutsch * Espan~ol