One of the most dangerous politicians in the United States – that’s what CNET calls Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden. What they are talking about is Biden’s relentless attacks on internet liberty, and the threat that he thereby poses to the evolution of technology. Now that the dust has settled and we have sobered up after celebrating the Obama victory, the Biden threat has become very real. Among other things, he has backed proposals like outlawing region free DVD-players, forcing internet providers to hunt “pirates”, legalizing the entertainment industry’s use of spyware and trojans, and, not least, having the state finance the film industry’s court costs when sueing file sharing teenagers(!).
I would love to say that this gives us Swedes a competitive advantage as a nation, but the problem is that internet innovation is collaborative and spans the entire world. If one nation pours gravel in the machinery, everybody suffers. Especially if that nation is the world’s leading internet nation.
On the positive side, these repressive policies always lead to rebellion and creativity. Philip Zimmermann’s wildly successful PGP-encryption was for example created to protect private communication from a law proposed by none other that Joe Biden himself. PGP is known to have helped dissidents in oppressed nations communicate freely, but also to have put terrorist communication in stealth mode. Funny what a little oppression can lead to. My guess is that we’ll now go into innovation mode again and figure out some really sophisticated stealth file sharing technology. But really, I’d much rather see that we humans would innovate to make the world a better place than to fight oppression. It feels more constructive somehow. Innovation to avoid legislation has a treadmill ring to it.
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