July 21, 2005
EFF Blog-a-thon - The Fight for Online Freedom
This is my entry for the Blog-a-Thon that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is sponsoring. The contest is about who used the internet in creative ways to stand up for digital rights. This should be FUN!
I started out in 1996 in the middle of my divorce where after getting a screwing by the courts I decided to represent myself pro se. This lead to about 20 lawsuits that I published online and resulted in my forced legal education. I found that I could actually intimidate judges by what I was publishing online about them.
In particular there was one incident where I called the Missouri Court of Appeals Souther District and recorded a conversation with the clerk of the court where she admitted that she had no idea if the judgements actually came from the judges or not. I not only posted it online but emailed a copy to 250 Missouri judges. It eventually led to the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court being caught forging a signature to cover it up and he stepped down as chief justice shortly thereafter. I don't know if I caused it but a fantasize that I did.
Needing attention for my legal woes I decided to Run for Congress in 1998 as a Democrat, and in 2000 I ran for US Senate against John Ashcroft as a Republican. I'm the guy who lost to the guy who lost to the dead guy.
Blogging has been good for dealing with consumer issues. When Sprint decided to charge me $241 for $7 worth of usage I used the web to fight back. I created This Web Page which contains 5 recorded phone calls of their collection agency threatening me in a game of electronic warfare. I did a similar web site on MCI when they shut off my phone service with 12 recorded phone calls. The CBS evening news found the MCI story on my web site and Interviewed me on the evening news.
Recording phone calls was very effective in a dispute I had with PayPal. They didn't like my Men's Guide to Escort Services and my Shy Girl's Guide to becoming a Whore. So they not only cut me off, but decided to keep my money and actually took $300 out of my checking account. So I called them up and recorded this conversation of them explaining their policies in their own words. Within two weeks I had my money back.
The web is good for making political statements as well. During the 2004 election Michael Moore made public statement giving people permission to pirate his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 on the internet but no one actually did it because they feared copyright infringement. So 2 weeks before the election I rented a 100mb line and published it for downloading within 2 hours of posting it on my blog. the 100mb line was saturated and stayed saturated up to election day. Once I did it other people joined in because of the media coverage and the fact that no one contacted me to take it down. (Thank you Michael Moore and Loin's Gate Films). This resulted in hundreds of thousands of copies being sent over the Internet.
I currently own several controversial sites like OverthrowTheGovernment.org and FlagBurning.org. Here's a video of me burning my 2000 census form on the steps of the Missouri Supreme Court. I host many political sites such as Bartcop, American Politics Journal, Political Strikes, and Faux News Channel. My motto for hosting is, No anti-bush site left behind.
Blogging is also good for social change. One can write articles that educate and empower the next generation. These articles include my anti-smoking tobacco message, The Truth about Smoking Pot and Why it's important for young people to vote.
My latest project is The Church of Reality which is a religion that I invested based on believing in everything that's real. The purpose of this religion is to evangelize reality the way it really is and to raise the importance of reality in society in general. It challenges fiction based religions on the basis of what is real.
So whether you are running for office, intimidating judges, standing up to big corporations that are screwing you over, fighting political battles, reforming the government, educating people, or starting new religions, blogging is the ultimate tool for free speech. It is so powerful that "they" would love to shut it down and it's only because of organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that people like me can continue to speak out and change that world ensuring that the human race will continue to evolve forward.