The Metaverse Will Not Be Televised!

Today I’m wearing black. Well, I’m usually wearing black,
but today I’m not the only one. That’s because there’s a huge
protest, mobilized online, which is

currently flooding the town of
Jena, LA. Today, over 10,000 people are converging on the town of Jena to
protest the ‘justice’ being handed down to these six students.
Many more are attending vigils in their home towns across the
country, and the Jena protest is being called the beginning of the
21st century civil rights movement.
(CNN.com: Thousands Rally to
support ‘Jena 6′)

The details of the case are particularly damning, as
it appears from the reported facts of the case that there’s clearly
some sort of fucked-up buddy system leveraged against the six
black students being charged with attempted murder and conspiracy
to commit murder for assault. (see ColorOfChange.Org)
But when white students attacked and threatened black students, no
charges were ever filed:

(Source)

This is only part of the protest action going on this week (it’s been
a crazy fucking week) as of course earlier this week there was the
protest, organized on

Facebook for Andrew

“Don’t taser me, bro” Meyer
who dared carry in Greg Palast’s book Armed Madhouse into a symposium
being held in Gainesville at the Universtiy
of Florida. Nor was Andrew Meyer the first to be arrested in the area for
asking
pointed questions about the documented voter fraud. The online
reaction, both positive and negative, is massive and ongoing.

Of course, both of these events are protests organized online, but
carried out in the physical world. While the organizing abilities
of the net seem fairly self-evident, and the impact of these protests
is still not fully apparent, there’s a few protests going on entirely
within virtual space that I also wanted to point out.

First, there’s the on-going saga of the Media Defender leaks.
Earlier
this week I covered this story in depth. Now,
in another round of
leaks, the
anti-piracy software and the IP addresses that Media
Defender relied on to sour the torrents have been released. While
this is a more pro-active form of protest than the previous two examples,
this is most definitely a global political response to an industry
determined to
play both sides of the piracy game to their benefit. I understand
that this virtual protest might seem fairly arcane and off the radar
to those who don’t engage in P2P file-sharing, and even more to the
point the actual situation isn’t being reported on in the mainstream
media.

While some might believe that if it’s not on television, it didn’t
happen, it’s probably more accurate to say that the reason we’re not
seeing coverage over this Media Defender debacle is because they
were contracted to the very media companies who own the mainstream
news broadcasts. It’s up to the blogs and the pirates themselves
to provide coverage of this online conflict, and this new round of
leaks provides more than enough tools to the pirate community to
secure the current torrent network against the software that’s been
used up until now.

And the second online protest is an even more esoteric situation, as
IBM employees from around the world prepare to start walking the
picketlines in the
metaverse. That’s right, Second Life is about
to see its first strike.

(Source)

While my first (rather cynical) thought was wondering if the online strike was planned
so that the strikers would be able to log in from work, I’m very curious
to see if there’s going to be any fall-out whatsoever from this online
action. Strikes, protest action, and activist work is effective
because it draws public attention to an issue. When that action is
being engaged in a virtual space, be that blogs or an avatar-driven
3d world, the public audience is necessarily diminished. While
the Jena 6 Protest is massive, that’s because there was a concurrent
word-of-mouth discussion over the case as presented on television.
Those interested in supporting the protest were able to find ways online
to join up.

In contrast, the Media Defender leaks are still resigned to a small
online community who know they’re on top of the biggest online story
of the year, but can’t seem to gain traction because the media institutions
are in support of the very company they’ve targeted. I could start
protesting the
adults pretending to be children in Club Penguin, but I
sincerely doubt I’d affect any kind of change, let alone grab the
cover of the NY Times with my actions. This Second Life IBM strike
is little more than a novelty at this point, picket lines work because
there are physical bodies presenting their case to onlookers. When
those onlookers can teleport, fly, or go offline, the effectiveness
of the strike is dramatically reduced.

I’m still wearing black though. And even more to the point, it’s not
lost on me that none of these protests touch on the biggest issue,
the war that happens to be going on over oil.