Defending The Right To Free Speech

Despite the fact that most people have nothing interesting to say ever, the right to free speech is something we will defend to the hilt.

I’m not sure if this is because people actually value their right to free speech or because, like a child who is reluctant to give away a toy they never play with, they value it simply by merit of it being theirs.

‘Protect free speech’ people will tweet, alongside the pusillanimous disclaimer ‘all tweets are my own.’ Here, the modern day Voltaire, willing martyr for his cause, beats his drum of principle loudly and proudly (while being careful to remain slightly out of earshot of his employer, who they fear will not tolerate such flagrant public self-expression).

So it was last week that the ‘all tweets are my own’ brigade took to the internetz to register their disgust against SOPA. Curtailing the right to steal the work of artists is, it was argued (not by the tweeter’s employer, you understand, I can’t make that clear enough, the employer would never say this), a natural stepping-stone to the shutting down of Wikipedia, the censoring of tweets and the ushering in some bleak, post-Soviet world.

Now, being lazy, I didn’t read the proposed bill very carefully so what follows may be completely on the wrong lines. Maybe SOPA does openly threaten to shut down Wikipedia and Google and ban people posting their opinions on message boards. Maybe it did promise the cessation of the web-as-we-know-it and to turn us into the new China.

Perhaps naively, I assumed ‘stopping online piracy’ was an attempt to stop people stealing other people’s art. But, according to many people I respect, it’s actually the opening gambit in an all-out assault on free speech online.

Well, an assault on free speech is a serious thing. It is not a right we should ever take for granted. Hearing or reading an interesting thought is one of the few times I feel connected to, and happy to be part of, mankind.

But who are the great exponents of free speech in the west now that the philosophes are long buried and the heretics largely victorious?

It is not our politicians. We traded in Westminster’s reformers and rhetoricians for a collective of Oxbridge-educated businesspeople some time ago.

It is not the assembled masses of Web 2.0. The group ‘anonymous’ by definition cannot claim to be unafraid of open expression. While twitter, sadly, is a platform with a greater propensity to stifle the utterances of others. Check Ricky Gervais’ regrettable ‘mong-gate’ episode, or Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘have them all shot’ outburst. #hecantsaythat could have been a trending topic for 2011 such were the twitch-hunts over people saying stupid things. Free speech is free speech. The concept is absolute. No caveats. Sorry.

Even the rock stars have nothing to say. Not any more. Today, a songwriter is more likely to write a song called “Velociraptor” than to write “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.” Yes, I’m looking at you, Kasabian.

“Hey, thanks for coming, this is a song I wrote about a scary dinosaur, I hope you like it.”

With so many people getting their knickers in a twist about free speech, is anyone actually making use of it?

One group springs to mind: the stand-up comics.

Stand-ups are not afraid to seize their sacrosanct oratory privileges and say the things other people are afraid to even think. Bill Hicks had more in common with Voltaire than anyone of my generation.

“It’s all about money, not freedom, ya’ll, okay? Nothing to do with fuckin’ freedom. If you think you’re free, try going somewhere without fucking money, okay?”

“Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”

He was a man who had something to say, who said what other people couldn’t find the courage to say, and who said it LOUD.

His natural successor is Doug Stanhope. When Stanhope raged against “some troops being assholes” recently and joked of his delight when those assholes got killed met with much moral outrage in America. But when you see the footage of US soldiers urinating on the corpses of their enemies, you realise it is important that these things are said. Pissing on the dead is what happens when there are no dissenting voices.

Louis CK is another who isn’t afraid to make a controversial point.

If a stand-up comic is any good (sorry, Mark Watson) it’s their job to flex their right to free speech.

Which brings me back to SOPA.

Most of the stand-ups seem largely to be against online piracy. Of course they are, it’s their work that is being stolen. They go through a rite of passage of putting their feelings on show in tiny venues. Then when they eventually make it big, some couch potato, who has never been to a comedy club in their life, can simply pick the fruits of their labours for free. Louis CK recently tried an alternative payment model to see if he could, you know, get paid for his hard work. He did – handsomely. And good for him.

If the rewards are not there, why should the artist create? Why should the talker talk? What good is it if the comedians say the things we are too afraid to if they can’t pay their rent? Why would a young comedian – the new Hicks, the new Stanhope, the new CK, or perhaps someone even better still – bother to get on stage if they can’t make a living from it? It’s unreasonable to expect anyone to be that magnanimous.

The world is becoming a fucking shithole, and we need free speech now more than ever. But as things stand, it seems to be only the comics who have the guts to use it.

And that’s really what I’m trying to get at here.

People attack SOPA on the grounds that it could threaten their right to free speech (while, y’know, lacking the courage to exercise their own free speech within earshot of their employers on a social networking site), when in truth continued online piracy might in fact silence the few people who are actually brave enough to use this privilege productively.

The definition of ‘free speech’ has contorted into a view that anyone who has the guts to make a living out of speaking must do so for free.

How fucked up is that?

SOPA may be concocted by the same forces of evil who are determined to frame Assange (our only other real hero of free speech). But stopping online piracy is not in itself necessarily a bad thing. Paying for stuff that people make is a social contract. It’s how we function as a society.

Of course, if and when the State steps in to censor our tweets about Beyonce’s baby then that is the time to fight. When the State clamps down on our online trolling and banal Facebook updates then we must fight for our right to say fuck all with everything we’ve got.

But until then – as a good boy who pays for my comedy, my music, my movies – I’m not too worried about SOPA.

The sense of entitlement to art and the creative work of others is getting out of control.

As long as every other fuck in the world gets paid for what they do, so should those who create the entertainment that fills our dull unimaginative little workaday lives.

That’s just fair trade.

(All views expressed are my own and do not reflect the views of the company I work for.)