Just last week, AT&T was in the news for two major stories, revealing them as… I think the legal term is “dicks”.

On Tuesday, classified documents were released confirming that they did indeed help the NSA with their warrantless wire-tapping activities. They didn’t just look the other way while the NSA did all the work but coordinated with them, re-routing traffic and purchasing equipment to make surveillance easier. The first of these “spy rooms” was constructed in San Francisco, about four blocks from my office. To be clear, this is not stepping out of the way to let justice be served—the wiretaps are illegal—it’s more like approaching a mugging in progress and offering the mugger a bigger gun.

Then on Wednesday, AT&T announced plans to “filter content” over the internet. They’ve outlined a plan where their servers will monitor the data packets sent through them and delete any that are found to by infringing on copyrights. They feel that somehow, by contributing to the infrastructure, they own what it carries. Imagine your water company deciding when you’re allowed to have water or your power company deciding when you’re allowed to have power. For even less of a stretch, imagine your telephone company (quite possibly AT&T) deciding which phone calls you can make or receive. Consider further that something like “copyrighted content” is not uniformly illegal, as legality depends on usage, and you’ve got a real bull-in-a-china-shop situation (fitting because filtering internet content is a criticism often aimed at the Chinese government).

Put these two together and you see an AT&T that uses their power irresponsibly and, quite possibly, illegally. Not an ideal partner for Apple, whose been trying to keep their image clean. Yet when the iPhone comes out on June 29th, the only way to get it is along with a Cingular/AT&T plan. What’s a nerd to do? Here are a few possible solutions.

Steve’s “blog” has recently had some fairly landmark posts on it about Apple’s perspective on DRM and their environmental policies, both of which have been in response to popular activist campaigns (the Free Software Foundation and Greenpeace, respectively). Perhaps they’d be willing to listen to reason on why telecommunications companies constantly monitoring our communications is not an ideal feature for “our digital life“.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) continues to fight the bully telecoms in multiple arenas. Oh that’s right, AT&T is also starkly against Network Neutrality and even funds astroturf groups to represent a non-existent public outcry in their favor. Almost forgot that. So the second possible solution is to set up a monthly donation to EFF equal to or exceeding your monthly donation (i.e. bill) to AT&T.

The last option is to wait for the iPhone to become available on Verizon (only marginally better on the Net Neutrality front) or another service. This could happen after the exclusive partnership with AT&T is over (see, even Apple gets locked into lame 2-year contracts) or by someone unlocking the iPhone so it can be used with other carriers.

My current plan is to wait on the iPhone. Mostly this is because I’ve learned my lesson on buying 1st generation new product lines from Apple, having purchased one of the first G4s back in 2000 and one of the first MacbookPros last year. Both are phenomenal machines, with just a few kinks that have since been worked out. But, unless I wait the full 5 years, this doesn’t address the political aspects of avoiding AT&T. Also to consider: does it make a damn difference? I’ve been boycotting Sony for almost ten years now and I don’t think anyone but my mom even knows. Ultimately, I think it’s a “can you look at yourself in the mirror-like shiny Apple logo?” issue. And that’s a question we need to ask ourselves over more than just the phone we use.

I’ve always found urban decay beautiful, or I guess specifically I’ve found it hauntingly beautiful. Walking around the scenes from Henk van Rensbergen’s abandoned places photography really puts perspective (“Too much fucking perspective” I can hear David St. Hubbins say) on what we think of as major achievements. Shelley’s “Ozymandias” comes to mind.

I think we can agree that the ruins of modern advertising, while perhaps a worthy monument to a substantial victory in reclaiming our own mental environment, are a bit depressing. Fortunately, there are a great number of things with which we can replace these former monstrosities. Some of them might even be useful.

Solar panels are an obvious choice. I’ve been to Brazil before (they call it “Brasil” there… don’t they know how to spell their own country?) and I recall it being quite sunny and smelling like gasoline. I believe the term I used was, “like a wildlife preserve where the zebras drive Hummers”. Even putting aside any mock and/or pathological jingoism, solar would seem to be an excellent decision.

Art is another viable option. Why should big multi-national corporations get all the fun? Local communities should get a chance to decide how to decorate their own neighborhood. People are already doing this, just not entirely legally, which leaves a lot of people with important things to say—but who won’t jump a fence to say them—silenced.

Finally, call me crazy here but we could just take them down.^* Leaving them up as skeletons suggests that they need to be filled, whereas taking them down would leave our next generation with an impression that they never belonged there in the first place. Then, if advertisers ever wanted to put up billboards again it would represent a change in the status quo, both physically and mentally—much more difficult to accomplish. We’re never any farther than one generation away from an entirely different world.

There are other things we could do, certainly. Windowbox-style local gardens, windmills, dynamic information (temperature, traffic conditions, etc.), or even painting each one a different bright color could all satisfy the need to turn commerical chaotic into populist pretty. What would you do with your own billboard?

* Actually, this hadn’t even occurred to me until I asked someone else what they would do in the situation.

Beantown (named after Boston Baked Beans, no doubt) was shut down on a scale that San Francisco only reserves for peace protests, labor protests, gay rights protests, anti-immigration prote—you know what, let’s just move on. Anyway, Boston flipped out today at the discovery of “suspicious” devices placed all over the city by terrorists.

These “terrorists” turned out to be an advertising firm doing guerilla marketing for the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. In case that last sentence made no sense to you, let me put it another way. Boston went apeshit over Lite Brites giving people the finger. No seriously, here’s what they looked like:

You can’t see the finger, because FoxNews at least has the decency to blur out a cartoon bird-flip. Don’t want our kids to pick up any nasty pixelated habits.

As much fun as it may be to watch Boston freak out, this is not a victimless crime. I speak not of the poor people who were late for work (gasp!) but the creator of the devices who was arrested on “a recently enacted statute making it a crime to place a hoax device that results in panic“. I’m curious to know what the definition of a “hoax device” is, as these devices were clearly not hoaxes, but Throwies.

Webster defines “hoax” as “an act intended to trick or dupe”. In a world were we are constantly inundated by “hoax devices” trying to trick us into buying clothes by duping us into thinking we’ll be loved/feared/respected or trick us into buying cigarettes by duping us into thinking they’re not going to give us cancer/emphysema/stinkiness or trick us into driving cars by duping us into thinking that global warming isn’t real/dangerous/our fault, I think these devices do not qualify as threats.

The Anti-Advertising Agency correctly states that “advertising is the graffiti of the Fortune 500” and arresting someone for throwing light on a building, much less using such brash words as “terrorism” to describe it, leave me feeling very afraid for both our values and our collective Spidey Sense in this country. I place the blame squarely on the people who think LED lights are somehow dangerous (they don’t even get hot, clearly ranking them below Xmas lights on the Threat Level).

Adult Swim got some serious bang for their buck though. Hire these guys again!

Update (2/1/07): Following their arraignment, the two guys arrested for putting up the devices agreed to only answer reporters’ questions if they were about haircuts in the ’70s. It’s great to see that they’re treating this issue with exactly the amount of respect it deserves. Here they are laughing in court:

He set down a case—his surgeon’s black bag—and pulled two trashcans out from an alley to form a makeshift barrier from passersby on the sidewalk. The surgeon’s bag opened and out came a simple Krylon spraycan. One of many. He stepped back and surveyed the three flats of particle board. Shaking the spraycan sounded a rattle that may have evoked a ball bearing stirring up gas-compressed paint to you or me; to him it was power, energy, excitement… art.

Three puffs into the air, to clear the nozzle, and a deep breath. He pulled a gas mask over his mouth and nose. Suddenly, any doubt vanished and with a samurai’s deft strokes his arm sliced through the air and paint met particle board. Thick black scribbles dashed across the wood. Grain yielded to gloss. Canvas yielded to creation. Bold shapes began to emerge from the barrage, he doubled back to fill them in. Chunky letters materialized.

Across the street eating in my favorite breakfast spot, I was unable to see exactly what was being written. I am notoriously bad at deciphering graffiti and, had a tree not partially obstructed my view, I would still have a hard time with a translation. My best guess was “DIE, PLAYGROUND, DIE!” which would make sense as the storefront belongs to Upper Playground and, as mentioned above, it had recently received the business end of an entire car.

Nor could I hear the conversations with pedestrians, but body language betrayed most of the subject matter if not the details. The young girl in a pink jacket and matching pink boots wanted desperately to touch the bubbly letters—probably unaware that they they said “DIE!”—but her father kept her reined in. A group of high schoolers, themselves neither skinny nor white, seemed to be searching for the right balance of “nice piece, man” and “fuck you whitey, that’s our subculture”. They watched for a while, passing a joint back and forth. Two hipster girls, replete with all the necessary two-tone bangs and cheap-looking expensive accessories, gathered and pointed.

The artist’s friend joined him. The first stepped back—looking much older now, white flecks of paint salting his hair—and the second stepped up, grabbing a blue spraycan from the array of colors. Shapes gained outlines. Lines gained depth. The audience nodded. Where ten minutes ago destruction had rendered a city block derelict and depressing, now there was life, color, and culture. They were still going as the rain started and I headed home.

When I left Indiana years ago, one of the reasons I cited was Hoosiers’ general disdain for marginally il/legal activities such as street art, underground music events, and controlled substances. Having my morning coffee and watching my neighborhood come together over exactly that, I realized that whatever I was searching for in a community, I had found a long time ago.

To start at the beginning, The Pirate Bay deals in BitTorrents. A method of sharing very large files in an extremely efficient fashion, BitTorrents have become the cutting edge of what the RIAA and MPAA are afraid of. It’s like Napster but reliable in quality and speed. Uh oh.

Naturally, the Pirate Bay has received numerous take-down notices, asking them to remove the files from their site. Each one gets published on their website, sometimes with a snarky reply, and they have—as of this writing—never deleted a single torrent. Ever. Not even one.

A grand majority of the comments on Digg express hearty congratulations to the Pirates for standing strong in the face of rude American media conglomerates (it should be noted that The Pirate Bay operates from Sweden which has markedly different copyright laws than the U.S.). However, there are plenty of comments like the following:

I hope the pirate bay knows in the US, divulging trade secrets has the same punishment as treason.

Keep “fighting against the man” kids, then sit back and bitch when prices are going up. Hopefully the end result will be your mom and dad will lose their jobs and you’ll have to pay for those new rims you got for your Honda by working at McDonalds.

I hope they catch these leeches and “waterboard” them.

Such venom!

What the debate really boils down to is a discussion of pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional ethics. Under what level of development is The Pirate Bay operating? Here are the typical reasons that people follow rules:

1. Pre-conventional. Rules are followed only out of fear of the consequences. Might is right. If you can enforce it, it is moral.
2. Conventional. Rules are followed because they’re the rules. Society wouldn’t function without them. Right?
3. Post-conventional. Rules are followed when they’re good rules. Otherwise, personal codes of ethics take precedent.

Which of these apply to The Pirate Bay? They are obviously not afraid of the consequences; in fact, they verbally abuse their accusers. U.S. copyright laws do not apply to them, since they’re in Sweden (and Swedish society seems to be doing okay). Finally, The Pirate Bay has made in painfully obvious, at every opportunity, that they don’t find these rules to be “good rules”. From their perspective, there is no reason to follow them.

Now which of those levels best apply to the copyright-holders?

I am loathe to use the G word, but domestic anger over The Pirate Bay is one of the consequences of Globalization. The same lack of international law that allows corporations to lower costs by avoiding minimum wage, skirting environmental law or criminal negligence is playing out in the other direction by allowing those pesky Swedes to circumvent our enlightened copyright laws.

The official law broken, buried in this pdf, is right here:

Nevada law requires every person or group of persons organized formally or informally who advocates the passage or defeat of a ballot question at any primary or general election to report their contributions and expenditures in excess of $100.

When the Drug Czar came to town back in 2002, the Marijuana Policy Project cried foul and filed suit. The Czar countered that campaigning against the question was part of his job in “speaking out about the dangers of illegal drugs.” The paradox is that, if Question 7 passes, marijuana would no longer be an illegal drug—so would it not be his job anymore?

I won’t weigh in on Question 7 itself, living in a city where medicinal marijuana is legal makes me aware of both the positivies and negatives, neither as extreme as either side in Nevada would have you believe. That said, illegally opposing legalization of something on the grounds that it’s illegal spins my head around with its level of absurdity. Using the same logic, I could just as easily say that legalizing marijuana would keep 14.6 million Americans from using illegal drugs every month. They’d still be smoking pot, it just wouldn’t be… y’know.

My mother, an elementary school librarian, recently told me about a book in which a kid decides that a ball point pen should be called a “frindle”. Since it’s a kid’s book, his years of campaigning are eventually rewarded and “frindle” is added to the dictionary. Let’s all wish “megagaltastic” the same fate. I bring this up (and have before) because social change is not unlike language.

There were outcries over the ebonics controversy destroying the English language, and later the same over pager slang. Our nation managed to survive both. Even “MILF” hasn’t destroyed any lives, despite it not being “a real word”.

At any rate, be it language, social change, or the legalization of a controlled substance, it takes those people who either knowingly break the rules or innovate into territory where rules have not yet ventured that push us as a culture, people, and planet. No cause, be it votes for women or gay marriage, can win without challenging what is “legal”. Our founding fathers, afterall, were traitors to the crown every one. If we limit ourselves to what is legal, we’re tacitly approving the world as it is. By breaking the law, we evolve.

I’m going to stop now, before I become a Think Different ad.

It reminds me of how Bush has lived up to his promise of being “a United and not a Divider” by doing more for global democracy than any previous president, namely uniting the world against him. In fact, despite hiding behind the flag (or in front of it, in the case of photo ops), Bush’s seeming contempt for America has ignited in me a patriotism that I thought long extinguished.

Here are just a few things that I love about this country that Bush seems to hate:

1. Three different branches of government that provide checks and balances that hold one another accountable. An incredibly good idea for so many reasons, yet he’s constantly undermining the authority of other branches—or at least whining and calling them names when they dare do their job.
2. Democracy. Yes, as in “the will of the people”. As in “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” With a job approval rating of around 30%, the consent of the governed probably has little impact on any decisions in this White House. In fact, I’d bet they think “the governed” have no idea what’s best for this country—and many would agree with them in that belief. It is, however, un-American.
3. Our country is a safe place that treats people with dignity and fairness. The statue of justice is blind, remember? That’s a symbol that the law treats you equally whomever you may be, not a symbol that the law looks the other way while you’re wrongfully abducted and sent to a secret prison or are stuck in Guantanemo Bay for months without ever being charged for a crime.

There needs to be a word for the emotion of simultaneous hilarity and horror, a sort of personal schadenfreude, that could capture the terrific irony of the NeoConservatives being thought of as the party of American Values (much less the Party of Jesus). America is merely a delivery vehicle for power to them.

I recently had a conversation about all of this with my (more conservative than I) step-brother, who is currently teaching English in South Korea. He lives only 50 miles away from North Korea. Still, our last chat went something like this:

“Hey Stan, what’s up in the States. I never hear about anything other than new movies coming out,” he asks.

“I’m kinda bummed about this torture debate.” I say.

“Ha ha…” he laughs.

“No really,” I say.

“What do you mean? Who could possibly be for torture?” he asks.

It was a stunning example of how far we’ve slid in the four years he’s spent overseas. I’m going to have a chance to see him this Thanksgiving, when a bunch of American’s in Asia will be descending on his house (or tiny, tiny apartment rather) for the holidays. We have plenty to be thankful for, like the America we grew up in—and may have again one day.