Censored 2014 (21 page)

With strong bulwarks to protect journalists, their sources, and whistleblowers against retaliation, Iceland has become a stronghold
for investigative journalism. Thus, Lowana Veal of Inter Press Service reported on the establishment of the Associated Whistle-Blowing Press (AWP) in Iceland.
³¹
Established in September 2012, AWP operates as a WikiLeaks alternative, “dedicated to bringing forth and analyzing leaked content” through “an international network of prominent journalists, researchers, lawyers and media activists based on local nodes and working together to provide society with a trustful and friendly source of analysis of information brought into light by whistle-blowers around the world.”
³²

The IMMI could not stop eight Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents from secretly entering Iceland in August 2011 as part of their attempts to investigate WikiLeaks operations in Iceland and to track down WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
³³
But, as was made public in February 2013, when Iceland's interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, learned that FBI agents had arrived in Iceland and were seeking cooperation from local police, he ordered the agents to leave the country. WikiLeaks subsequently reported that, despite the order to leave Iceland, FBI agents remained, continuing to interrogate one eighteen-year old individual over the course of at least five more days, without the presence of Icelandic police officers.
³⁴
Iceland lodged a formal protest against the FBI actions with US officials; the US Department of Justice has refused to comment on the case.
³⁵

Despite US pressure on WikiLeaks and Iceland, in April 2013, Iceland's Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in favor of WikiLeaks. The court held that Valitor (formerly VISA Iceland, and currently a Visa subcontractor) had unlawfully terminated its contract with WikiLeaks donations processor DataCell.
³⁶
Since December 2010, Visa had effectively enforced an economic blockade by preventing the processing of WikiLeaks donations by credit card. The Icelandic Supreme Court ordered Visa's Valitor to reinstate payment processing for WikiLeaks donations within fifteen days or face a fine of 800,000 Icelandic krona ($6,830) per day. WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange called the decision a “victory for free speech” and “against the rise of economic censorship to crack down against journalists and publishers.”
³⁷
Although it is still impossible to donate directly to WikiLeaks via credit card, the Freedom of the Press Foundation allows donors to make anonymous, tax-deductible donations by credit card.
³⁸

Corporate media have all but ignored IMMI. A search of the ProQuest Newsstand database on this topic returns just two stories from that period. An editorial in the
Christian Science Monitor
on the global state of free speech made passing reference to Iceland; the other article, published in the
Los Angeles Times,
noted that in crafting its “leading edge” legislation, Iceland's lawmakers had consulted with “WikiLeaks' controversial founder,” Julian Assange, and pushed Iceland “into uncharted territory.”
³⁹

Creative Commons Celebrates Ten Years of Sharing and Cultural Creation

It is our good fortune that all is not yet
couched in terms of purchase and sale.

—Marcel Mauss, 1925
⁴
°

Founded in 2001, Creative Commons announced its first copyright licenses in December 2002.
⁴¹
Part of a larger free culture movement, Creative Commons (CC) sought to show, in the words of the organization's executive director, Glenn Otis Brown, that “the choice between self-interest and community is a false choice. . . . Sharing, done properly, is both smart and right.”
⁴²

Ten years later, Jason Hibbets of opensource.com reported that governments—including Austria and Italy—are using Creative Commons for their open data portals; the University of California-Santa Cruz library has adopted a CC license for all of its content; and You-Tube now has over four million Creative Commons videos available.
⁴³

In corporate coverage of Creative Commons' ten-year anniversary, the
Wall Street Journal
ran an editorial by one of CC's founding board members, Lawrence Lessig, but otherwise CC received only fleeting notice, usually in association with the death of Aaron Swartz.
⁴⁴
The New York Times
did note the appointment of Joichi Ito—director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and a CC board member—to the board of the New York Times Company.
⁴⁵

In March 2013, CC's Timothy Vollmer reported that the United States Register of Copyright, Maria Pallante, testified to Congress's House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet that the US needs “bold adjustments” to US copyright law.
⁴⁶
As
Vollmer reported, Pallante's remarks highlighted “the crucial need to expand and protect the public domain.”
⁴⁷
A search in the ProQuest Newsstand database returned no corporate news coverage of Pallan-te's congressional testimony.

Pallante's call for “bold adjustments” took place against the backdrop of a strong international push for copyright reform, as exemplified by the work of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
⁴⁸
However, through multinational treaties—including the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—the US is “one of the leading nations advocating for stronger copyright protection.”
⁴⁹

This is not an either/or situation. As Vollmer reported, “The existence of CC licenses does not limit the need for reform. Open licenses help forward-thinking people and institutions to live and thrive in the digital age now, and illuminate the roadmap for beneficial reform to come.”
⁵⁰

CONCLUSION

From Marcel Mauss to Cindy Milstein, progressive thinkers have proposed alternatives to the pursuits of wealth and power as ends in themselves. In his 1925 classic,
The Gift,
Mauss deconstructed the assumption that all significant human interaction could be analyzed in market terms. Instead, he argued, gift economies not only predated markets but also provided a more robust basis for “group morality,” because exchange of useful articles in gift economies connected not simply individuals but, more fundamentally, groups.
⁵¹
More recently, Milstein has championed a more horizontal, direct form of democracy—instead of its representative form—as the best means of “freedom making.”
⁵²

The alternative visions of Mauss, Milstein, and many more call into question corporate power and hierarchical government. As 2012–13 independent news coverage of Iceland and the Creative Commons demonstrates, alternatives to top-down government and market-driven economies are not just viable but robust. Regardless of inattentive corporate media and their cursory, slanted coverage, Iceland and the Creative Commons show us that, regarding popular participation in
the political and economic decisions that affect society as a whole, the doors of the house are increasingly open.

ANDY LEE ROTH, PHD
, is associate director of Project Censored and teaches sociology at Sonoma State University and College of Marin.

Thanks to Elizabeth Boyd, Thorvaldur Gylfason, and Nick Wolfinger for suggestions on earlier versions of this text.

Notes

^1.
Cindy Milstein, “Democracy is Direct,” in
Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World,
ed. David Solnit (San Francisco: City Lights, 2004), 42.

^2.
Jessica Conrad, “Icelanders Vote to Include the Commons in Their Constitution,”
Commons Magazine,
November 2012,
http://onthecommons.org/magazine/icelanders-vote-include-commons-their-constitution
.

^3.
“Cracks in the Crust,”
Economist,
December 11, 2008,
http://www.economist.com/node/12762027
.

^4.
Alex Pietrowski, “Iceland's Hordur Torfason—How to Beat the Banksters,”
Waking Times,
December 11, 2012,
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/12/11/icelands-hordur-torfason-how-to-beat-the-banksters
.

^5.
Joel Bleifuss, “Icelandic Lesson in Democracy,”
In These Times,
May 2013, 5.

^6.
For instance, “Former Kaupthing Bank Boss Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson Arrested in Iceland,”
Ice News,
May 6, 2010,
http://www.icenews.is/2010/05/06/former-kaupthing-bank-boss-hreidar-mar-sigurdsson-arrested-in-iceland/
. The first executives charged with responsibility for the collapse received jail sentences in December 2012, while approximately eighty cases brought by the special prosecutor remain to go to trial. See, for example, “Executives at Collapsed Iceland Bank Jailed for Fraud,” Reuters, December 28, 2012,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/28/uk-iceland-crisis-idUKBRE8BR0EW20121228
.

^7.
Andrew Higgins, “Iceland, Fervent Prosecutor of Bankers, Sees Meager Returns,”
New York Times,
February 3, 2013:A6.

^8.
For example, “Icelandic People Refuse to Repay Internet Bank's Multi-Billion Debt,” RT News, March 9, 2010,
http://rt.com/news/iceland-icesave-bank-referendum/
.

^9.
For example, “Icelandic Voters Reject Icesave Debt Repayment Plan,”
Guardian,
April 10, 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/iceland-icesave-debt-repayment-no-vote
.

^10.
Ben Chu, “‘Total Victory' for Iceland over UK in Saga of Icesave Depositors,”
Independent,
January 29, 2013,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/total-victory-for-iceland-over-uk-in-saga-of-icesave-depositors-8470714.html
. The EFTA court decision received limited coverage in the
New York Times:
Andrew Higgins, “Iceland Wins a European Court Victory in a Banking Case,”
New York Times,
January 29, 2013:B4.

^11.
The referendum read: “Would you want natural resources which are not in private ownership to be declared the property of the nation in a new Constitution?” Gylfason, “Iceland: Direct Democracy,” and Conrad, “Icelanders Vote.”

^12.
Conrad, ibid.

^13.
Ibid.

^14.
See Gylfason, “Iceland: Direct Democracy,” and Thorvaldur Gylfason, “Putsch: Iceland's Crowd-Sourced Constitution Killed by Parliament,”
Truthout,
April 1, 2013,
http://truth-out.org/news/item/15462-putsch-icelands-crowd-sourced-constitution-killed-by-parliament
.

^15.
“Constitutional Bill: A proposal for a new constitution for the Republic of Iceland delivered to the Althing by The Constitutional Council on 29 July 2011,”
http://stjornarskrarfelagid.is/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Iceland_New_Constitutional_Bill.pdf
.

^16.
The study compared Iceland's 2012 draft constitution with twenty-four other national constitutions, including Iceland's current constitution, drafted in 1944, and the US Constitution of 1789. In terms of inclusivity, Iceland's draft constitution ranked second only to Bolivia's 2009 constitution. (The US Constitution of 1789 ranked twenty-third, by comparison.) See Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, “A Review of Iceland's Draft Constitution,” Comparative Constitutions Project, October 14, 2012, 3–4,
https://webspace.utexas.edu/elkinszs/web/CCP Iceland Report.pdf
.

^17.
Gylfason, “Iceland: Direct Democracy in Action.”

^18.
Ibid.

^19.
See Article 66 of the “Constitutional Bill.”

^20.
“Iceland Vote: Centre-Right Opposition Wins Election,” BBC News, April 28, 2013,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22320282
.

^21.
Ibid. See also “Pirate Party Makes History in Iceland Elections,” RT News, April 29, 2013,
http://rt.com/news/pirate-party-gains-iceland-587/
.

^22.
Gylfason, “Putsch.”

^23.
Ibid.

^24.
Elkins, Ginsburg, and Melton, “Iceland's Draft Constitution,” 11.

^25.
See, for example, Sarah Lyall, “Iceland Ousts Government that Steered It Out of Crisis,”
New York Times,
April 29, 2013:A4; Clemens Bomsdorf, “Iceland Votes for Power Change,”
Wall Street Journal,
April 28, 2013:A14. A search in the ProQuest Newsstand database, using combinations of the terms “Iceland,” “constitution” and “referendum,” generated no instances of corporate news coverage on the electorates' overwhelming approval of a new constitution including the commons.

^26.
Caitlin Dewey, “12 Countries Where the Government Regulates What You Can Name Your Child,”
Washington Post,
May 3, 2013: “In Iceland, for instance, parents must choose from a list of roughly 1,800 girls' names and 1,700 boys' names.”

^27.
Bleifuss, “Icelandic Lesson.” By contrast, the
New York Times
notes that “the lessons of Iceland's turnaround are not readily applicable to Europe's more complex economies;” see “Iceland's Mending Economy,”
New York Times,
July 8, 2012: A6.

^28.
See Articles 14, 15 and 16, on “Freedom of Opinion and Expression,” “Right to Information” and “Freedom of the Media,” respectively, “Constitutional Bill.”