The collapse of the SOPA and PIPA acts in the US congress might appear to be a victory for those who champion internet freedom.

But powerful supporters of the acts see it as a temporary setback, and remain determined not to let it get in the way of forcing online industries to submit to intellectual property rights.

Just as EMI and Universal sunk Napster at the turn of the century, so they are now trying to defend their moribund businesss model by taking court action against those who turn huge profits under cover of the internet’s legal grey-area.

While Google and Wikipedia crowed about the success of their blackout protest, the FBI leaned on the New Zealand government to arrest four founders of the Megaupload website, which allowed people to view copyrighted material free.

Kim Dotcom has been denied bail, and is awaiting extradition to the US on charges of sharing copyrighted material without permission.

Megaupload claimed 1 billion users, and 4% of internet traffic. The struggle over internet freedom shows how capitalism is acting as a brake on the full development of humanity’s productive and creative forces.

In theory, knowledge, culture and information is tied to private owners, available only to those who can afford it. In reality the internet represents the sharpest challenge to this control, allowing billions of people to access information and ideas previously available only to a privileged minority.

Internet freedom challenges capitalist ideas over intellectual property rights. The growing movement to defend freedom of the internet is a reaction against the monopoly control of broadcast and print media, against the growing interference of government censors under the guise of ‘national security’ ‘official secrets’ and ‘anti-terrorism’ laws.

The power of the capitalist system is that it is based on private property rights, allowing a tiny number of people to own the natural, technological and intellectual wealth of the planet.

Inevitably they exploit the reproduction and distribution of these resources for their own benefit, not the benefit of the people who extract, package and consume them.

We need to support the movement in defence of internet freedom and give it a perspective of challenging the fundamental pillars of the capitalist system – if we are opposed to the 1% profiteering from our entertainment, then we must even more oppose the ‘right’ of these few billionaires to profit from their monopoly control over the planet’s human and natural wealth which rightly belongs to all of us.

We want to put these resources under the democratic control of the majority who rely on them, whose democratic organisation is the only possible means of challenging and replacing capitalist exploitation with a better society.

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Stop SOPA: the Internet strikes back 

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Ideas, culture and Media under Capitalism

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Grime Daily shut down – an attack on reality

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