*Megavideo and Megaupload taken down by US government, millions lose access to culture.*
Tomas Milian is an actor of Italian B-movies of seventies and eighties. He is a police inspector in a turbulent Rome, where criminal activity, political terrorism and old Fiat cars are the background for his enquiries and investigations. Over the years these have become cult movies sometimes shown by linear TV channels in the summer, late at night. Despite the actual movie is a vernacular for low level sex jokes, improbable car chases and questionable outfits, it undeniably shows a part of Italian history and mentality. It is also an opportunity to see how the city looked back then. There are around 10/15 films in this series and only a small part, maybe 1/3 of them can be found on Amazon. The rest are somewhat hidden in cinema studios, or locked up in some old VHS format or stuck in late night summer broadcasting schedule. There is currently no opportunity to get a hold of them. The solution came when single users, who were fan of the series and had collected the tapes, transcoded them in a digital format and shared it with the world. First peer-to-peer networks and then propagated them through services such as Megavideo or Megaupload. Now an obscure B-Movie filmed in the early ‘70s like “Delitto al Blue Gay,” a series of murders in a gay bar on the Tiber’s side. Try finding this movie on Amazon, impossible, in some Italian stores online, unavailable. Imagine if you are trying to see it outside of Italy. Megaupload service was a great placeholder and container of locked up, inaccessible culture. All of the movies from the series were available for download, as were the theatrical plays of Eduardo de Filippo, a brilliant Neapolitan who wrote hours long plays in the 1940/1950/1960, try to find his plays online. Megaupload had them – or the users did – and through that service I was able in a matter of minutes to get a 80 years old black and white recording of one of his plays, Christmas in Cupiello’s house, while being under the covers in a cold Polish night. The reach and vastness of culture that these services provide(ed) should not only be treasured, but institutionalized. Taking down Megaupload and arresting its CEO and other top managers, might make sense to protect some Hollywood blockbusters, but it is disastrous in the restriction placed on the access and spread of culture, not only in the US but globally. It came as a surprise that the sites were being shut down, considering their efficient and instantaneous removal of infringing material upon request. The sites should have fallen under safe harbor jurisdiction for their methodical deletion of reported infringing material, instead the founders were arrested in New Zeland by the FBI, with the consent of local authorities. This is another example of the US government going around carrying a big stick and imposing its jurisdiction on other countries and citizens – even though the service was a channel to gain access to knowledge for millions of people. The legal basis of this action was not only the .com domain, controlled by the ICANN but also some Mega servers hosted in Virginia. Once again for the interests of few, whether Halliburton or Hollywood, a vast majority of citizens in the world are deprived of liberty, access to (commercially invaluable) information in a climate reminding more the Spanish inquisition instead of a country exporting democracy. The paralegal witchhunt currently going on apparently is not enough, new draconian and anachronistic laws are being considered(yes SOPA and PIPA). Giordano Bruno was a philosopher in 1500 who theorized the inifinty of worlds, that went against the vested interests, ie the Catholic church so he was burned alive in Campo de Fiori, a famous square in Rome. Even though not fair he still had a trial, if these laws will be passed the dark ages of the internet will materialize since, for example, the user sharing that theatrical play of the 80’s would automatically be committing a criminal felony as the website hosting the content. As a Free Culture movement we have to oppose and denounce this attack not only on the internet as a global unregulated service but on the access to culture, otherwise inaccessible, threatened by walled gardens and medieval crusades. What is there to do? What can we do? What can the EU do? Follow on Twitter: Sfcurope Website: http://www.studentsforfreeculture.eu
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