Intervention - Digital Fascism in Europe

Dear colleagues,

Below, I make an intervention of the news announcement from European Commissioner Reding about "re-working" copyright law in Europe.

I use the text of Paul Bigioni, a lawyer who wrote a book about the persistence of fascism.

My intention is to show that we are on our way to a neo-fascist world.*

I'm sorry it is only in English.

Best wishes,
Fatima Lasay

*There is an EU-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement draft proposal where these new rules on stronger copyright (as well as patents and trademarks) will be imposed in Southeast Asia as well.

EC's Reding Calls for Shake-up of Online Copyright Laws
Full Story at PC World

EC Reding Outlines 5-year Plan for Fascism in Europe
(Text interventions drawn from "Fascism then. Fascism now?" by Paul Bigioni)

Paul Meller, IDG News Service
Jul 10, 2009 1:40 am

European laws governing the digitization of content such as books, movies and music need a major re-working in order to keep Europe relevant in the digital age, said the European Commissioner for the information society and telecoms Viviane Reding on Thursday.

Before the rise of fascism, Germany and Italy were, on paper, liberal democracies. Fascism did not swoop down on these nations as if from another planet. To the contrary, fascist dictatorship was the result of political and economic changes these nations underwent while they were still democratic. In both these countries, economic power became so utterly concentrated that the bulk of all economic activity fell under the control of a handful of men. Economic power, when sufficiently vast, becomes by its very nature political power. The political power of big business supported fascism in Italy and Germany.

Laying out her manifesto for a renewed five-year term in the job, Reding said in a speech that she shares the frustrations of Internet companies including Google, which would like to offer interesting business models in the field of online book publishing,"but cannot do so because of the fragmented regulatory system in Europe."

Business tightened its grip on the state in both Italy and Germany by means of intricate webs of cartels and business associations. These associations exercised a high degree of control over the businesses of their members. They frequently controlled pricing, supply and the licensing of patented technology. These associations were private but were entirely legal. Neither Germany nor Italy had effective antitrust laws, and the proliferation of business associations was generally encouraged by government.

She dismissed the existing legal framework around the downloading of content such as music and film from the Internet, arguing that it forces users to become pirates and called for "simple, consumer-friendly" rules for accessing digital content in Europe's single market.

This was an era eerily like our own, insofar as economists and businessmen constantly clamoured for self-regulation in business. By the mid 1920s, however, self-regulation had become self-imposed regimentation. By means of monopoly and cartel, the businessmen had wrought for themselves a "command and control" economy that replaced the free market. The business associations of Italy and Germany at this time are perhaps history's most perfect illustration of Adam Smith's famous dictum: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Around 60 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds admit to having illegally downloaded content from the Web she said, citing a European Commission survey. Piracy is increasingly being seen as "sexy" among what Reding called the young "digital natives."

"Are there really enough attractive and consumer-friendly legal offers on the market? Does our present legal system for Intellectual Property Rights really live up to the expectations of the Internet generation? Have we considered all alternative options to repression?

Have we really looked at the issue through the eyes of a 16 year old? Or only from the perspective of law professors who grew up in the Gutenberg Age?" Reding asked.

Ironically, Hitler pandered to the middle class, and they provided some of his most enthusiastically violent supporters. The fact that he did this while simultaneously destroying them was a terrible achievement of Nazi propaganda.

"Growing Internet piracy is a vote of no-confidence in existing business models and legal solutions. It should be a wake-up call for policy makers," she told the conference hosted by Brussels think tank, the Lisbon Council.

How could the German government not be influenced by Fritz Thyssen, the man who controlled most of Germany's coal production? How could it ignore the demands of the great I.G. Farben industrial trust, controlling as it did most of that nation's chemical production? Indeed, the German nation was bent to the will of these powerful industrial interests. Hitler attended to the reduction of taxes applicable to large businesses while simultaneously increasing the same taxes as they related to small business. Previous decrees establishing price ceilings were repealed such that the cost of living for the average family was increased. Hitler's economic policies hastened the destruction of Germany's middle class by decimating small business.

In addition to overhauling the online copyright rules, Reding said she wants to create a Europe-wide public registry for books that have gone out of print or whose authors are unidentifiable.

"More than 90 percent of books in Europe's national libraries are no longer commercially available, because they are either out of print or orphan works," Reding said, adding that a Europe-wide registry "could stimulate private investment in digitization, while ensuring that authors get fair remuneration also in the digital world."

Google welcomed her comments. "Book digitisation projects send a strong signal that authors, publishers, libraries and technology companies can work together to bring back to life the world's lost books," said Santiago de la Mora, Google's head of European book partnerships in a statement.

Creating a registry is "important," he said, adding: "We want to play our part."

As in Germany, the few owners of the nation's capital assets had immense influence over government. As a young man, Mussolini had been a strident socialist, and he, like Hitler, used socialist language to lure the people to fascism. Mussolini spoke of a "corporate" society wherein the energy of the people would not be wasted on class struggle. The entire economy was to be divided into industry specific corporazioni, bodies composed of both labour and management representatives. The corporazioni would resolve all labour/management disputes; if they failed to do so, the fascist state would intervene.

Unfortunately, as in Germany, there laid at the heart of this plan a swindle. The corporazioni, to the extent that they were actually put in place, were controlled by the employers. Together with Mussolini's ban on strikes, these measures reduced the Italian labourer to the status of peasant.

Much of her speech focussed on how information and communication technologies can help dig Europe out of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

Fewer, larger competitors dominate all economic activity, and their political will is expressed with the millions of dollars they spend lobbying politicians and funding policy formulation in the many right-wing institutes that now limit public discourse to the question of how best to serve the interests of business.

The consolidation of the economy and the resulting perversion of public policy are themselves fascistic. I am certain, however, that former president Bill Clinton was not worried about fascism when he repealed federal antitrust laws that had been enacted in the 1930s.

In addition to her ideas for boosting digital content she also repeated her call for the rapid adoption of the raft of laws collectively known as the telecoms package, which were blocked in spring by a disagreement between lawmakers over Internet users' rights.

The telecoms package covers everything from the distribution of radio frequencies, to the creation of a Europe-wide regulator, to protecting users' privacy on line. The broad aim of the laws is to forge one single telecoms market for the 27 nation bloc.

Mussolini, the one-time socialist, went on to abolish the inheritance tax, a measure that favoured the wealthy. He decreed a series of massive subsidies to Italy's largest industrial businesses and repeatedly ordered wage reductions. Italy's poor were forced to subsidize the wealthy. In real terms, wages and living standards for the average Italian dropped precipitously under fascism.

Even this brief historical sketch shows how fascism did the bidding of big business. The fact that Hitler called his party the "National Socialist Party" did not change the reactionary nature of his policies. The connection between the fascist dictatorships and monopoly capital was obvious to the U.S. Department of Justice in 1939. As of 2005, however, it is all but forgotten.

"Experts also estimate that the present regulatory fragmentation in telecoms costs Europe's businesses 20 billion euros per year -- a cost factor that, in view of the present crisis, we should eliminate as soon as possible by bringing the reforms into force, and by applying the new rules effectively," Reding said.

Regarding the distribution of wealth, the neo-liberals have nothing to say. In the end, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As in Weimar Germany, the function of the state is being reduced to that of a steward for the interests of the moneyed elite. All that would be required now for a more rapid descent into fascism are a few reasons for the average person to forget he is being ripped off.