Taylor Swift:

I'd like to point out that people are still buying albums, but now they're buying just a few of them. They are buying only the ones that hit them like an arrow through the heart or have made them feel strong or allowed them to feel like they really aren't alone in feeling so alone.

The Taylor Swift essay spread through Facebook with the typical breathlessness of professionally promoted viral media - "Talor Swift wrote an Oped for the Wall Street Journal, and its AMAZING!" I did not bother to read it until you also referenced it here on MemeStreams, and I hate to detract from your point, but my reactions are on a completely different dimension.

While Taylor Switft speaks artfully to the emotional connection that artists seek to make with their fans, its hard not to see the specter of the Recording Industry Association of America haunting the shadows behind her. The purpose of the essay is to, once again, emphasize the recording industry's grievance that a change in information technology has changed their business model (which was, of course, a product of information technology in the first place.)

While Taylor Swift is certainly a more pleasant ambassador for their interests than the contemptible David Lowery, the bottom line here is still the same. The RIAA feels that society owes them their 15 billion and must make whatever accommodations they demand in order to ensure that they get it. It will be a long time before people forget the bitter fight over SOPA and total tone deafness that the industry has exhibited regarding the legitimate concerns that their proposals raise.

Having said that, the only criticism that the RIAA made of the effort to defeat SOPA that I think has some validity is the criticism that if not for the support of Google the effort would not have been nearly as successful. While it is hardly sympathetic for a party that seeks to enrich itself by lobbying for special policy accommodations to argue that some of their opponents are also financially motivated, the criticism is nonetheless important for civil liberties advocates to understand.

The fight over SOPA and PIPA involved far more public engagement than the fight over NSA surveillance of meta-data has motivated thus far. Are people genuinely more concerned about internet filtering technology than surveillance of telephony meta-data? As time progresses, these two concepts will converge. The monitoring of telephony meta-data will eventually entail the monitoring of Internet meta-data, and what you can monitor, you can sanction, which is just as good as preemptive blocking. They are basically the same discussion.

There might be an underlying distinction from a civil liberties perspective - telephony meta-data monitoring primarily implicates the freedom of association, whereas monitoring of Internet meta-data also implicates the freedom of speech - the right to read. It is quite possible that people are willing to fight more vigorously to defend their right to read what they want than their right to associate with whom they wish. But, I am not convinced that the general public really appreciates this distinction - everyone is convinced that this is about the Fourth Amendment, incorrectly in my view.

I am concerned that the more troubling conclusion is the correct one - that the policy of this country, as David Lowery suggests, is properly thought of as a negotiation between wealthy interests like the RIAA and Google over billions of dollars, and that the legitimate interests of common people are totally irrelevant, and furthermore, that common people cannot organize resistance to massively unpopular policies unless corporate economic interests are implicated.

In fact, if not for the impact that NSA surveillance is having on foreign use of American hosting services, would silicon valley care? Perhaps there would be even fewer people engaged in organizing resistance to it - fewer dollars available for people who develop protest websites and mine Congressional voting records.

We find ourselves at a moment when the legislative effort to halt meta-data collection has basically broken apart. The USA Freedom Act was scuttled in the House and isn't going anywhere in the Senate. Congress is not going to fix this. The courts have been anything but clear. The data collection has been going on for a year since it was publicly disclosed, and it doesn't seem that any action is going to be taken to stop it. It doesn't even seem to be a principle concern for people in the upcoming political season.

Where does that leave those of us who are opposed to it?

Taylor Swift, the RIAA, and the NSA