…or I can very highly recommend MAILMAN, by J Robert Lennon.

I’m just coming to the end of the last of your books (both as MM and MMS). Thanks so much for writing them. Loved “Spares”. I want a Ratchet of my very own. But I digress….

Only trouble is, now I’m going away for the weekend and haven’t got a sodding book to take. On the assumption that you won’t have a new book in the shops by Friday morning, got any suggestions for a weekend read ?

Cheers, Matt

Regarding the whole jerking of the knee reaction to SOPA that you complain about in your blog post, I actually have a theory concerning this (I’m a bloke. We always have a theory), and believe it to be a single example of a wider syndrome (I’m a bloke. *Everything* is a single example of a wider syndrome).

It’s a variant of your old school mass psychogenic illness applicable to online metabehaviours – aka mass hysteria – and it’s spread by the same forces that spread memes and viral marketing, but more insidiously, because you don’t notice it happening. People see a link, or a picture, or a video, and click ‘share’ without reading anything further about it because… well, they don’t know why. But now they believe it, wholeheartedly. In the same way, people will spread ridiculous hoaxes across social networking sites, exhibit exactly the same disproportionately vitriolic opinions about minor celebrities, or proffer near identical reviews of movies they’ve seen – or in many cases, actually haven’t.

For example – Bono’s “a c**t”, despite his only crime appearing to be a certainly level of smugness commensurate with being a multi-millionaire singer with a weakness for annoying soundbites and campaigning for global equality. A variant used to go around about Sting back in the day, promulgated by the NME – but the pool of afflicted is so much larger now than disconnected globs of badly-dressed teenagers in common rooms across the country. Now it’s a giant, amorphous glob of the virtual afflicted. Probably still badly dressed though, what are the odds? None of them know why Bono’s a c**t. None of them can properly explain their feelings to you. But they believe it, with a bright, searing passion, the kind that starts holy wars. Often they’ll sit back in exasperation and, throwing their hands up in the air, protest that he simply has “a punchable face” – an explanation that means “I want to punch him in the face”, and so doesn’t serve as an explanation after all, like when people try to define a word by using a derivative of the same word in their definition.

Do excuse me, it’s that time of the afternoon, I have three minutes until I leave work, and I’m just waffling to kill time. He bloody is, though. A c**t, I mean. It’s obvious.

This is possibly one of the sanest, most balanced and best-written summing up of the issues that I’ve read :-)

You’re right about the paradigm shift, too… and I’m vaguely working toward a post on that: though I suspect you might be a better person to write it…

Fundamentally, as a student of human nature (D-average, could do better, make sure you don’t end up repeating the year), I do wonder about people that can’t defend their actions without recourse to legal definitions, or who try to restate the assumptions of the question before answering – you know, something like:

“Piracy is theft!”
“Well, the legal definition of the word ‘theft’ is actually…”

Oh, stop it. You’re getting something that costs money without paying for it, and damn straight it wasn’t a gift.

“How are smaller artists supposed to make a living when…”
“Ahhh, but show me definitive proof that the record industry has lost a single sale through piracy. You can’t? Ahhh…”

No. No one can. And you know it. Stop reframing the argument and demanding evidence you know is impossible to obtain.

I’d tend to argue that, in 21st century Western society, there really isn’t any such thing as ‘privacy’ any longer – at least, not in the way we’re so used to thinking of. There’s ‘security’, but I think people tend to get the two confused. I used to find people for a living a decade ago, when I was a fraud investigator, and that was when the internet was in its late adolescence and still fumbling with the bra-straps of ‘privacy’. The ID cards issue had me rolling my eyes, because, well, *really*? The government already has all of this information and couldn’t organise an arse-stratching piss-up in a brewery using both hands. Remember how we’re always complaining how bureaucracy is ludicrously inefficient and frustrating? This is where it works in our favour.

Having said alllll of that – at length, and I do apologise – I opposed SOPA. Not through any jerking of the knee, as I hope I’ve made clear, but because the legislation wasn’t fit for purpose. It wouldn’t have done the thing it was set up to do – Pirate Bay, one of the only illegal sites bold-as-brass enough to maintain an online voice, have pointed out that taking down a website or removing it from search engine results/fucking with its SEO wouldn’t work because they’ll just rebrand in minutes, and so will everyone else… in the meantime, SOPA gave some fairly alarming powers to the government, and we’ve seen how bad, rushed legislation intended to do good things can be perverted to allow other uses. Anti-terrorism legislation having no effect on terrorism but allowing police to prevent protests and increasing stop-and-search powers. The Criminal Justice and Punlic Order Act of 1994. That kind of thing.

SOPA was, basically, another example of the large corporations wanting to preserve the current paradigm and attempting to legislate their way back into the 20th century. It can’t work. This is the argument the pirates use which makes sense – it doesn’t justify their actions, but it makes sense as a point of view. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

But it doesn’t make any sense that you, as the creator, are having to go around asking sites to take down illegally duplicated and distributed material *that belongs to you*, and feel like you should be saying ‘please, sir’. And there’s no middle ground – the paradigm needs to change.

This is where I pull the ripcord and realise that the parachute I’m wearing is actually a knapsack, because I have no idea how to do that. What? I’m a writer, not a… law… doing… guy.

Shut up.

Well, believe me, there *are* people who’ll unfollow because they disagree with something you’ve said… I guess everyone gets to sculpt their own inline experience.

You’re right, it’s disquieting when laws are passed that open the door to draconian implementation. I personally wonder whether they’d ever go so far, but a full debate is definitely what’s needed.