As the first activity of We The Goondas Campaign, we organized a public screening of Internet’s Own Boy, a biography of Aaron Swartz, a hacktivist in US who worked actively to promote internet freedom and in a true sense, the first martyr of Freedom of Internet/knowledge movement. We The Goondas campaign motive is to raise awareness amongst public about the recent amendment to Goonda’s Act which was passed by Karnataka Legislative Assembly and then when there are sufficient number of people mobilized, we will decide on how to take the campaign forward. The screening was organized in Institute of Agricultural Technologists, Queens Rd, Bangalore on 21st Sept 2014 at 2:00 pm. Over all close to 60 people attended the screening. The screening was followed by a discussion led by Lawrence Liang from Alternative Law Forum on the whole knowledge based movement that Aaron was a major part of and also his role that should be a major inspiration for all of us from the developing countries. Lawrence emphasized on the absurdity of various laws which are being passed across the world to regulate internet. Aaron was a martyr of such an absurd law. With respect to Goonda Act, he talked about how it is completely absurd because it tries to weigh in completely diverse range of people in the same pan, right from people involved in boot-legging, land-grabbers, drug offenders to copyright violators. He emphasized on the point that where else can you find such comparisons if not in absurd laws. Like a statement by Aaron in the movie, Lawrence also emphasized on the fact that books and other content is not just about a certain idea being represented, it is also a representation of the culture and tradition of the society which shouldnt be locked up. He mentioned a question that Suraj, a delhi based, working class boy had asked him, “माना ये किताब आपकि हॆ, इस किताब कि परछाई किसकी हॆ?”(“Even though I agree that the books is yours, who owns the shadow of the book?)”. He mentioned how he was pretty sure that Aaron would have put up all the content of JSTOR into torrent and that was the sole motivation for him to download it and how laws actually stopped him from doing such a generous thing. He mentioned that any law which doesnt allow us to be generous to each other, is not an law to follow. The discussion also led to interesting questions on how the campaign should be taken forward, what we can expect etc. As of now, we currently do not have a clear idea on how to take the campaign forward and hopefully with more and more groups and people joining us, we will be able to come up with the clarity on what realistically can be expected out of the campaign.
Over all, a very good start to the campaign. ALF was very generous to have contributed towards the cost of the hall which was close to Rs. 18,000/- We definitely were not able to mobilize as many people compared to the money put in and hopefully we will be able to do a much better participated event next time.
Photos of the event: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/124841002@N04/sets/72157647495245607/
