The 360 Deal

The 360 Deal — Andrew Dubber (ed)

360 as in “360 degrees”. The full circle. As in, we’ll take a piece of everything, thanks. — Andrew Dubber

Let’s all get wise, get educated, and help kids in poverty in India while we’re at it, yes? — Steve Lawson

The 360 Deal is what record labels are now offering, not content to milk musicians dry on recording deals, they now want to control and bleed dry every aspect of a musician’s life, touring, merchandising, publishing, management …

When the exploitative nature of the record labels is well known, bands reduced to little more than indentured slave labour working on the record label plantation, the last thing they need is those same record labels to control every aspects of their lives.

Amanda Palmer left her record label because they wanted to control every aspect of her life, what she wore, what she looked like, what her music sound like. She has never looked back.

• How Amanda Palmer Built An Army Of Supporters
• Amanda Palmer: The art of asking

James Taylor had accountants scrutinise his record label. He found he was being ripped of big time to the tune of millions of dollars.

• How big record labels rip off artists

A good management team gets you the best deal. They are on one side of the negotiating table, the record company the other. How can you get a good deal when the record label is your management team? This is like being in an in-house company trade union.

The 360 Deal is a book, an idea of Andrew Dubber and Steve Lawson with Andrew as the editor, to counter The 360 Deal promoted by the record labels. 360 people from all aspects of the music business, record executives, music producers, academics, rock musicians, classical musicians, techies, DJs, each give 360 words. The people giving this advice, may differ, but the one thing they have in common is experience and a love of music.

$3-60 is the minimum price, you can pay more.

The money raised, all 100% of the price you pay, goes to Music Basti, a music charity based in Delhi helping poor kids.

One of their projects, a joint project with New Music Strategies, was Monkey on the Roof. Street kids in India were pulled in off the street and taught music. They could not believe it when folks came from England and wanted to record them.

How do you measure success? Degrading yourself on X-factor, or having the privilege of helping street kids through Music Basti?

The 360 Deal is published by LeanPub as an e-book, with all proceeds going to Music Basti (LeanPub have waived their fees). Publishing as an e-book has the advantage that it can be published before it is complete, to get the advice out there, then continually updated until complete.

If you have 360 words of advice, then please contact the editor Andrew Dubber.

We need someone to advocate piracy and sharing, someone on crowd sourcing, why you do not need a record label, the importance of social media.

My own thoughts on contributors: Imogen Heap, Amanda Palmer, Zoe Keating, Yolanda Charles, Rudolf Schenker (founder and lead guitarist German rock group Scorpions, author of Rock Your Life), Paulo Coelho (writer and strong advocate of piracy, former record executive, producer and songwriter), Save the Tumbledown Dick (importance of small venues for live music), The Barn (hosting live gigs).

Rudolf Shenker was told he could not be a rock guitarist, he was German and only Brits and Americans could be rock guitarists, he ignored the advice and followed his dreams.

Paulo Coelho ignored the advice he was given and followed his dreams.

That is probably the most important advice you can be given. Follow your dreams, give it a try, or spend the rest of your life regretting your humdrum life. Play music because you love it, because it gives you a buzz, not because it makes your famous, not because it makes your rich.

The 360 Deal is a New Music Strategies project.

Another New Music Strategies project is Any And All Records, a rather novel if not unique record label, one that does not rip off the artists.

Excellent advice, money donated to a charity, is a much better 360 deal than that being offered by the record labels.

Steve Lawson and Andrew Dubber are co-founders of New Music Strategies.

Steve Lawson is bass player, and has been known to indulge in some excellent music and have some interesting views on the state of the music industry.

Andrew Dubber is professor of music at Birmingham University. And congratulations Dubber (as known to all his mates) for making professor.

• The 360 Deal podcast
• The 360 Deal – A Book Of Very Useful Music Advice
• Leanpub Podcast Interview #7: Andrew Dubber
• The Alchemist
• Rock Your Life
• Rock and Roll is Dead
• Music in the Digital Age

The Yes Men Fix The World

The Yes Men, posing as top executives of giant corporations, infiltrate their way into big business conferences and pull off the world’s most outrageous pranks.

What they show is the real face of Big Business.

The Yes Men Fix The World is the film the US Chamber of Commerce did not wish you to see. Please therefore ensure shared widely.

• Crowdfund “The Yes Men are Revolting” – A movie and an action platform!
• Dow pays “strategic intelligence” firm to spy on Yes Men
• “The Hobbit” saves money shooting Mordor in Tar Sands

Implement the Leveson Report in full

The Murdoch Mafia is pulling all the strings it can. Already it has puppet David Cameron jumping to the Mafia tune.

The Leveson Report gives us a once in a lifetime chance to reform the press and remove the corrosive corrupting influence of Murdoch from British public life.

We want the Leveson report implemented in full, and that includes a 20% cap on media ownership to cut media empires down to size so that no one owner or editor can grow too powerful.

We want media plurality and an equally tough regime to enforce it.

This is not a gag on free speech, it is not a curb on freedom of the press, it is a curb on media barons and their bullying of politicians to act against public interest, it is a curb on media barons violating the lives of ordinary people, whether famous or not.

• Debunking the Five Biggest Media Myths About the Leveson Report

We stopped Murdoch seizing control of BSkyB and we must stop him again.

The Hacked Off Petition calling for Leveson to be implemented in full, has already been signed by over 80,000 people. Have you signed? If not, please sign.

• Leveson Report: Hacked Off Petition Signed By More Than 80,000 People

Please also sign the Avaaz petition and stop the Murdoch Mafia.

Who controls the message? – Noam Chomsky

Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky

In a totalitarian state you force people to do what you want through fear. This is not possible in a democracy. In a democracy you manufacture consent through necessary illusions for the elite, the top 20%. The bottom 80% obey orders. The bottom 80% dull their minds, feed them rubbish, the last thing you want is for them to think.

The corporate controlled owned and controlled media are the agenda setters. They filter what we are allowed to see, and that is our perception of reality.

In 1968 we carpet-bombed North Vietnam, then the surrounding countries. Today we us drones to bomb Pakistan and Afghanistan. The delivery mechanism may have changed, not much else has changed.

Freedom of the press

Yesterday was good day for press barons and vested interests. Bad day for Dowlers & McCanns. Proud day for David Cameron. — Hugh Grant

It would seem David Cameron’s address is no longer Number 10 Downing Street: it’s now Flat 2, Rupert Murdoch’s arse. — Stephen Fry

“If it’s not bonkers I’ll do it” – David Cameron. It wasn’t and he didn’t. — Hugh Grant

Clearly the public want it, there’s been a judicial review and I think the recommendations should be implemented. There’s no good reason why they shouldn’t be. — Gerry McCann

With a group of (non celeb) victims including Hillsborough families listening to PM. Buzzword is betrayal. — Hugh Grant

Mr. Cameron said that he would implement sensible recommendations: it is time for him to honour that commitment and join the other political leaders by supporting the Leveson recommendations in their entirety. — J K Rowling

This is not about press freedom. The UK press, has been owned by a few rich individuals who pursue a highly ideological agenda. — Jemima Khan

If state regulation of press undermines UK work on international freedom of speech, how does UK arms sales to Saudi advance the cause? — Mark Thomas

We all want freedom of the press, well ok not all, maybe not Vladimir Putin who has a problem with free speech and Pussy Riot, but in general we all want a free press.

We want a press that is free of government shackles, free to hold the powerful to account, to shine a light into dark corners and expose dirty deals, to carry out investigative reporting that shows neither fear nor favour.

We occasionally get that and it is what the press trots out if there is ever a hint that their excesses may be curbed.

But it is not what we get. We get endless drivel about moronic TV programmes, the lives of boring celebrities, we have the press poking their unwanted noses into the lives of other people whether rich and famous or ordinary folk, poking their noses in and ruining people’s lives.

• Ten myths about press abuse

The myth of a free press is just that, a myth. We do not have a free press. How can a press be free when it is owned by people like Murdoch who use it to further their own agenda?

Noam Chomsky has long argued we do not have a free press. We have a press that is part of and controlled by corporate big business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded.

• Noam Chomsky on Media, Politics, Action
• Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky
• Who controls the message? – Noam Chomsky

A press can never be free when it is owned by corporate Big Business. A press can never be free when it is dependent on advertising from vested interests.

An example of the corporate owned and controlled press in overdrive was the reporting of Occupy camped outside St Paul’s last year. It bore no resemblance to what was taking place, it was pure fantasy laced with malice.

What masquerades as a free press is propaganda intertwined with prurient drivel.

It is not only the national press that is bad, so too is the local press.

Is it news when a local paper regurgitates a press release from a developer as news? Is it news when a local paper without question reports what they are told by a local council?

We have a race to the bottom as media outlets try to retain their dwindling circulation.

Anyone who does not appreciate just how bad is our press, look at the press in Europe.

It has been proposed that an independent body be formed to regulate the press. The press say they are happy with this, though if you look closer, you will find they have little choice, and different elements of the press have a different view of what an independent regulator should look like and do.

What they are not happy with is that the independent regulator is enshrined in law. Why? They can only not be happy, if they have no intention of complying. Having conceded the need for an independent regulator, all that statute does is ensures it has teeth.

David Cameron said he would accept the findings of Lord Justice Levenson unless they were bonkers. He has now reneged on that promise. Why, could it be that as was shown during the inquiry he is still in the pocket of Murdoch?

When push comes to shove, David Cameron always shows his true colours, on the side of his paymasters.

It is a bit rich coming from Cameron that he is in favour of freedom. This is the man who only last week wanted to restrict the right to file a Judicial Review to right wrongs.

Lord Levenson did not though address a few obvious issues.

We have a corrupt press that was not prosecuted by corrupt police because they were in the pay of the press, and corrupt politicians who failed to deal with either the press or the police because they were in the pocket of of the press.

Ed Miliband has for once talked sense. We must carry out in full the recommendations from Lord Justice Leveson, if not, we will back here again in a decade.

Please sign the petition calling for implementation of Levenson in full (and that includes limiting the amount of media control of any one individual or corporation). Please pass on.

• Victims launch Leveson petition
• Dear journalists: grow up
• J.K. Rowling’s statement on David Cameron’s response to Leveson

Resignation of George Entwistle

Salem Witch Trial

And now Nineteen persons having been hang’d, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the Churches of N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one clear’d; about Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and Two Hundred more acccused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer comes to a period,… — Robert Calef

When I put an end to the Court there ware at least fifty persons in prision in great misery by reason of the extream cold and their poverty, most of them having only spectre evidence against them and their mittimusses being defective, I caused some of them to be lettout upon bayle and put the Judges upon consideration of a way to reliefe others and to prevent them from perishing in prision, upon which some of them were convinced and acknowledged that their former proceedings were too violent and not grounded upon a right foundation … The stop put to the first method of proceedings hath dissipated the blak cloud that threatened this Province with destruccion;… — Governor William Phips, 21 February 1693

After seeing a picture in the past hour of the individual concerned, this is not the person I identified by photograph presented to me by the police in the early 1990s, who told me the man in the photograph was Lord McAlpine. — Steven Messham

Last night George Entwistle resigned as Director General of the BBC.

• George Entwistle resigns as BBC director general
• BBC Director Quits in Furor Over Coverage of Sexual Abuse

When George Entwistle appeared before a House of Commons Culture Select Committee, the day following a Panorama programme investigating the failings of Newsnight re Jimmy Savile, his testimony beggared belief.

He had heard in passing from one of his executives at a party that the flagship news programme Newsnight was investigating one it his flagship stars Jimmy Savile (now diseased), to whom BBC planned a major tribute, and he asked no further questions!

Newsnight for whatever reason, shelved its investigation into Jimmy Savile. There can be many reasons for doing so, the evidence does not stack up, superseded by more important news stories. So far the BBC has yet to come up with a plausible explanation.

Panorama then decided to investigate Newsnight. The programme was shoddy, allegations treated as fact, less than plausible witnesses, hearsay.

• Why did Newsnight spike a story on Jimmy Savile?

Last week Private Eye had a detailed look at the BBC, which cast even more doubt.

Newsnight, determined to play catch up and restore its damaged reputation, had what was claimed to be an expose. They went back to the 1970s, widespread abuse of children in children’s homes in North Wales, a cover up. An investigation into the abuse, the report was destroyed and never saw the light of day. This was followed by an Inquiry, which in reality was a cover-up. Police turned a blind eye and failed to follow up complainants.

In advance of the programme, names were going to be named. The programme proved to be something of a damp squib in terms of naming names, but it did highlight the abuse and subsequent cover-ups.

On the programme was one of the child abuse victims, who was prepared to speak on the record in front of cameras. He said the abuse not only took place within the homes, but that the children were leased out. That he was repeatedly raped, that a senior figure from the Thatcher era was involved.

At no time was anyone named. It was The Guardian on Friday that outed Lord Alpine as the named abuser, by using the clever guise of mistaken identity.

• Prime Suspect 3
• ‘Mistaken identity’ led to top Tory abuse claim

The victim has subsequently withdrawn the allegation.

• Lord McAlpine victim of mistaken identity, abused man says

This though raises many questions. Why was the victim shown a photo by the police and told it was McAlpine? Did the police have their suspicions? If the victim identified the person in the photo as the person who abused him, why was this not investigated by the police? Why was this victim not allowed to raise this at the Inquiry?

At least that appeared to be the case. But subsequent reports, it was the child abuse victim who handed photos to the police of boys being raped. Photos that were then ordered to be destroyed. Much later was the victim showed a photo which was not of McAlpine, thus withdrawal of statement, humble apologies. This being much worse than previous scenario.

• McAlpine and North Wales child abuse photographs

But what has been overlooked, there were two witnesses on the programme. One who chose to remain anonymous. His voice only, was on the programme.

Yesterday morning George Entwistle appeared before John Humphrys on the Today programme. His position as Director General of the BBC became untenable following his performance. He knew nothing about the Newsnight programme, he knew nothing about the report in The Guardian. Did he know what day it was?

That evening, the inevitable, he resigned.

From my own experience in broadcasting, the BBC is bloated and arrogant. Too many layers of management, too much done by committee. As I learnt, a senior person will not talk to a junior person, they do so through intermediates, up and down the management chain, Chinese whispers.

Listen to Feedback on BBC Radio 4. Legitimate criticisms is dismissed by programme makers and station controllers.

Radio4 has lost many good programmes.

Cost cutting has decimated news coverage. News is too often trivia, because it is cheap. So-called experts on programmes are not.

Al Jazeera, Russia Today, Democracy Now are offering far superior news coverage.

Newsnight has been attacked for using The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. They are forced to do so by budget cutting and edicts on outsourcing.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism are being slurred. Is this part of a hidden agenda? They have been reporting on drone strikes in Pakistan.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism was established because of the failure or lack of investigative journalism in the corporate-controlled mainstream media. They ask questions that are not being asked.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has exposed the extent of Tory Party funding from financial sector, fiddling of MPs election expenses, high pay on public sector, fraud and scams within EU Structural Funds.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has worked with the Financial Times, Al Jazeera, not just the BBC.

It is worth repeating. Newsnight did not name Lord McAlpine, The Guardian a week later did. Newsnight said a senior Tory of the Thatcher era. Newsnight did not, as shoddy reporting is claiming, imply it was Lord McAlpine. They did not say, a senior Tory of the Thatcher era who just happened to be Party Treasurer. That the finger was pointed at Lord McAlpine was because of information that was already circulating, not because of Newsnight.

The name of McAlpine was circulating long before Newsnight did not name him.

Shoddy reporting by BBC News subsequent to resignation of George Entwistle: Newsnight did not name McAlpine. Newsnight did not imply McAlpine.

Why did the police show the abuse victim a photo and say it was McAlpine? Did they have suspicions? When the victim said yes that was his abuser, why no investigation?

We need a Judicial inquiry, not a mishmash of overlapping ad hoc inquiries.

The truth may never be known: passage of time, witnesses dead, too frightened, lacking in credibility.

What we do know is abuse took place, there was a cover-up.

The resignation of George Entwistle, who clearly was not up to the job, is obscuring the real issue, abuse at children’s homes in North Wales, was there a paedophile ring operating involving powerful men? There clearly were powerful men involved as it was they who orchestrated a cover-up.

BBC is now caught up in a witch hunt. For many weeks we have seen a Jimmy Savile witch hunt, mass hysteria orchestrated by the gutter press (who as a bonus can destroy the BBC).

In the 1950s we had the Senator Joseph McCarthy Reds Under the Beds witch hunts. Before that in Massachusetts the Salem Witch Trials.

Why did Newsnight spike a story on Jimmy Savile?

There are many reasons to spike a news story:

• poor story
• overtaken by other news stories
• lack of evidence
• legal reasons
• leant on from above

It was a very simple matter for the editor of Newsnight as soon as this story broke to come onto Newsnight and explain his reasons for killing the story. Strange that he did not.

Instead they invited Greg Dyke a former BBC Director General to appear on the programme. Who declined.

Instead they have launched an inquiry.

Any BBC internal inquiry lacks any credibility.

Now that the editor of Newsnight is shown to have lied, an independent inquiry is required.

Who ‘helped’ the editor of Newsnight to write his blog?

What does ‘step aside’ mean? Surely if he is shown to have lied, he should be fired?

Why are the BBC refusing to answer questions on the inquiry that they have launched?

If, as appears to be the case, George Entwistle the current BBC Director General of the BBC was involved in a cover-up, then he should resign with immediate effect. Its is difficult to see how George Entwistle can keep his job.

Nick Jones, a veteran BBC journalist of many years experience, speaking on BBC radio 4 PM this evening said it beggared belief that George Entwistle did not know what was going on. There were basic questions he should have been asking.

Almost as an aside, Nick Jones said that stories he had been working on, the Miners Strike in the 1980s and lobbying in the 1990s, had been blocked from above.

Why is the BBC smearing its own investigative journalists in off-the-record briefings?

The Panorama programme Jimmy Savile – What the BBC Knew shoddy: hearsay, innuendo and rumour treated as fact, unproven allegations treated as fact, a Newsnight producer referring to victims (no alleged victims), Panorama reporter referring to crimes (only crimes when found to be in a court of law).

Paul Gambaccini on camera appeared so shifty it was difficult to believe a word he was saying, and all he was doing was regurgitating rumour and innuendo.

Throw in Gary Glitter guilt by association.

The alleged victims were either people who it was implied had a criminal record, very serious mental problems, or both. Even the alleged victims admitted they were not credible witnesses.

The Panorama programme admitted that police inquiries, when reviewed by CPS, insufficient evidence.

The Panorama programme cried out for a competent lawyer to appear on the programme, review the ‘evidence’, and be asked: Would this stand up in a Court of Law?

Why was the Panorama programme aired at the same time as Newsnight? Very poor editorial judgement.

We have something akin to the Salem Witch Trials, mass hysteria orchestrated by the gutter press.

Newsnight probably had good editorial reasons to spike the story as it was a story built on shifting sands.

What the Panorama programme did show was that neither the Editor of Newsnight nor the Director General can possibly remain at the BBC.

Twitter, NBC, and the “Streisand Effect”

By now you probably know at least the outlines of the recent controversy surrounding Twitter, NBC, censorship, and the Olympics.

Let’s very quickly review.

Unlike virtually every other broadcaster on the planet covering the Olympics, NBC decides to delay and edit all non-Internet Olympic programming for prime time, explicitly suggesting that American audiences are “too stupid” to understand events such as the opening ceremonies without NBC’s “expert editing and commentary.” NBC raises ire in England when they cut a tribute to terrorism victims from the delayed, edited, U.S. version.

NBC proclaims that their approach has been vindicated, since viewership of their bastardized coverage is breaking records, and since they’re in business primarily to make money, not to serve viewers in any case. Observers note that since most viewers didn’t know how to use the Internet to find “illicit” live feeds, they’re like any hungry person — they’ll eat what’s put in front of them.

A journalist upset about NBC’s handling of Olympic coverage sends out a Twitter tweet with an NBC executive’s corporate email address, suggesting that viewers let him know how they feel about NBC’s coverage.

Twitter suspends the journalist’s Twitter account, claiming he violated Twitter terms of use related to “private information” and “information not already published on the Internet publicly.”

Mass interest in the story ensues, making the NBC executive’s email address one of the best known in the world.

NBC claims they only filed a complaint about the journalist’s tweet after Twitter itself suggested they do so, and NBC says they did not realize this would result in the journalist’s Twitter account being suspended.

Twitter admits that their team partnering with NBC for the Olympics did indeed notice the “offending” tweet and suggested to NBC that a complaint be filed. Twitter stipulates that while it’s possible to argue about whether the specific email in question actually contained private information, it was clearly wrong for the Twitter team to have triggered this chain of events.

Journalist’s Twitter account is restored (this might have happened anyway after a warning, according to normal Twitter policy).

I’m very pleased to see that Twitter has clearly admitted that proactive stream monitoring and dispute filing of this sort by Twitter itself are inappropriate, and that they will take steps to avoid this sort of confrontation in the future. The confidence of Twitter’s user community is perhaps its most crucial asset — once really lost it may be difficult or impossible to regain.

Of perhaps broader long-term interest is the whole question of public information and censorship on the Internet.

We can make short order of the “was it public?” question in this particular case.

The NBC exec’s corporate email address was of the form “firstname.lastname@nbcuni.com” — a format that is not only highly standardized for public email addresses, but explicitly exposed on NBC Universal’s own media contact Web page.

What’s more, in this case the executive’s address was already specifically noted on various Web pages (including a page protesting NBC from 2011), making his address public by an even more obvious measure.

An argument has been made that his address didn’t appear on many pages, so it wasn’t “widely” known.

I don’t know what “widely” is supposed to actually mean in this context, but the bottom line is that a simple search would find his email address in seconds, so the absolute number of pages where the address appeared is really utterly irrelevant. One is as good as a thousand from the searcher’s standpoint.

Clearly, this email address was public. Twitter could have quickly made this determination to a reasonable level of confidence.

Which leads us to another question.

What if the journalist in this case hadn’t tweeted the actual email address, but rather tweeted the simple search terms required to find the address? What would Twitter have done in that case?

I don’t know the answer to this one, but the question itself points to the fundamental issue.

Attempts to control the dissemination of information on the Internet that has already been made public, are almost always doomed.

As regular readers probably know, I call this concept “public is public.”

We can be upset that certain information is out there, we can wish it weren’t,
we can dream of turning back the clock and stuffing the genie back into the bottle.

None of this will usually make any difference at all, except that efforts to limit the spread of such information will often trigger the notorious “Streisand Effect.”

The Streisand Effect — named for entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose efforts to block the dissemination on the Net of information regarding her Malibu home led to vastly more attention to that property than would have been the case if she hadn’t complained in the first place.

We see this sort of situation play out in various related forms again and again.

Efforts to takedown already published data result in even more copies appearing all over the Web, creating an impossible Whac-A-Mole nightmare for anyone trying to remove the data, and sometimes media attention that attracts orders of magnitude more people who then access the data.

In the NBC/Twitter case, that tweeted email address would have likely had virtually no impact if Twitter hadn’t suspended the account, creating a cause célèbre in the process.

That’s not to say that Twitter — like all Web services — doesn’t have a legitimate responsibility to act in cases of actual, real abuse.

But it’s important for us all to suppress the urge to err on the side of censorship, on the side of control. This is especially true considering the reality — like it or not — that once information is out there on the Net, it is in most cases effectively indelible, and that efforts to retroactively delete such data will not only almost always fail, but can easily do a great deal of collateral damage to innocents in the process.

You need not necessarily revel in this state of affairs, but it is the reality, and to fight against it is like trying to hold back the ocean with a sandcastle.

As always, I appreciate your thoughts on this and other issues, at my own email address of lauren@vortex.com.

And that’s one address you can share without fear of page takedowns, account suspensions, or even guilty feelings in the dead of night.

Thanks.

–Lauren–

Posted by Lauren Weinstein on his blog.

• #NBCFAIL Abysmal London 2012 coverage by NBC

‘Father of the Internet’ warns Web freedom is under attack

“Father of the Internet” Vint Cerf on Monday warned that Internet freedom is under threat from governments around the world, including the United States.

“Political structures … are often scared by the possibility that the general public might figure out that they don’t want them in power,” he said.

He sounded the alarm about the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), arguing the group is poised to assume the role of global Internet cop.

“There is strong indication that the Internet will enter the picture [for the ITU],” Cerf said at the Freedom to Connect conference.

Cerf said the ITU is likely to try and lock in mandatory intellectual property protections as a backdoor for easy Web surveillance.

Even good-faith efforts at Internet policymaking should be viewed with skepticism, Cerf said, because balancing freedom and security “isn’t something that government alone is going to figure out.”

He criticized the Cybersecurity and Intelligence Protection Act (CISPA), legislation passed by the House to encourage companies to share information about cyber threats with the government, because it lacks “adequate constraints” on how the information is used.

But Cerf said he has the “optimistic belief” that attempts by hostile governments to restrict access will be circumvented by resourceful engineers around the world.

“If someone stops me from communicating, I’ll find a way around it,” he said.

Cerf also urged vigilante groups such as Anonymous to stop using cyberattacks as a means of activism, saying the hackings are counterproductive.

“I don’t think lawlessness is our friend,” he said.

Ultimately, there is a legitimate role for law enforcement on the Web, he said, adding that “it would be bad for us as a community to say … that all the good things outweigh the bad.”

“That’s not a credible position to take,” he said.

Cerf said activists and regulators alike harm themselves by using terms like “cybercrime” because they suggest that “every bad thing that happens on the Internet is a crime.”

“Some are just bugs,” Cerf said, while suggesting a better goal for policymakers should be “cybersafety.”

Cerf, a computer scientist who was instrumental in the Internet’s creation and is now employed by Google as its “Internet evangelist,” said officials in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe are using intellectual property and cybersecurity issues “as an excuse for constraining what we can and can’t do on the ‘net.”

Originally published in The Hill.

Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, has warned that Internet freedom is under threat from governments around the world, including the United States, UK and EU.

Vinc Cerf has warned that officials in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe are using intellectual property and cybersecurity issues “as an excuse for constraining what we can and can’t do on the ‘net.”

I could not agree more!