www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjrPuYLAIkk

What is SOPA?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) is on the surface a bill that attempts to curb online piracy. Sadly, the proposed way it goes about doing this would devastate the online economy and the overall freedom of the web. It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, and others may cease to exist in their current form if this bill is passed.

What is PIPA?

The Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) is SOPA’s twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie to sites like Youtube, the site isn’t held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement. The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site. PIPA would change that - it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site’s domain in extreme circumstances.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out four excellent points as to why the bills are not only dangerous, but are also not effective for what they are trying to accomplish:

• The blacklist bills are expensive. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that PIPA alone would cost the taxpayers at least $47 million over 5 years, and could cost the private sector many times more. Those costs would be carried mostly by the tech industry, hampering growth and innovation.
• The blacklist bills silence legitimate speech. Rightsholders, ISPs, or the government could shut down sites with accusations of infringement, and without real due process.
• The blacklist bills are bad for the architecture of the Internet. But don’t take our word for it: see the open letters that dozens of the Internet’s concerned creators have submitted to Congress about the impact the bills would have on the security of the web.
• The blacklist bills won’t stop online piracy. The tools these bills would grant rightsholders are like chainsaws in an operating room: they do a lot of damage, and they aren’t very effective in the first place. The filtering methods might dissuade casual users, but they would be trivial for dedicated and technically savvy users to circumvent.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZmEMUqUlXA

The Wild Hunt supports a free Internet, and so should you! More on this here, and here.

Willard voiced concerns that the relationships between companies providing web-filtering software to public institutions may be “inappropriately preventing students from accessing certain materials based on religious or other inappropriate bias.” She went on to note that terms like “occult” or “cult” are “frequently applied to any non-traditional religions” and that it would be “unacceptable for schools to block access to non-traditional religious sites.”

Five years earlier, the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association, issued a resolution affirming that “the use of filtering software by libraries to block access to constitutionally protected speech violates the Library Bill of Rights.”

However, today, the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), passed in 2000 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003, mandates Internet filtering software on any library or K-12 school that receives federal funding. The mandate covers only obscene material, and content deemed “harmful to minors,” but the seeming intersection of religion and content-control software continues to haunt public institutions as web-filtering has become an everyday part of our virtual society.

On January 3rd, 2012, The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Eastern Missouri announced the filing of a lawsuit charging the Salem Public Library with unconstitutionally blocking access to websites dealing with minority religions, and “improperly classifying them as ‘occult’ or ‘criminal.’” It’s alleged that Salem Public Library officials refused to change their filtering policies when challenged, and that the library directory Glenda Wofford intimated that “she had an obligation” to alert the authorities to report those who were attempting to access blocked sites.

This new case not only raises the issue of web filtering in our public institutions, but why an “occult” category is even an option for secular and government-funded filtering clients where such control is unneeded or even illegal. The company that provides filtering services to the Salem Public Library, Netsweeper, currently categorizes several prominent Pagan organization sites as “occult,” including Covenant of the Goddess (COG), Circle Sanctuary, and Druid fellowship Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), while more mainstream faith sites are listed under “religion” or “general.”

Media critic and scholar Peg Aloi says she is troubled by the inclusion of Pagan sites in “occult” filters, “since this word is not even necessarily associated with Paganism, Wicca or earth-based spirituality.” Dr. Gwendolyn Reece, Ph.D., Director of Research, Teaching and Learning at American University Library notes that “whatever the initial intent of the law may have been, the software used to comply with CIPA censors numerous topics that have no bearing on protecting children and the way the software blocks access to information reflects a particular constellation of values. The real consequence is to undermine part of the necessary infrastructure in a democracy by denying citizens the requisite tools to inform themselves through free inquiry.”

The more one digs, the more it seems that the “occult” category was one created to cater to the “constellation of values” of conservative Christian religious groups in the United States. Phaedra Bonewits, whose site, Neopagan.net, is listed as “occult” by Netsweeper, claims that the initial target market for filtering software “was Christian households, thus all the ‘cultic’ keywords being included with the porn.” I tried to contact Netsweeper by phone and email for background on how a site comes to be labeled as “occult” in their system, but a representative never responded.

What is clear is that leaders and clergy within the modern Pagan movement believe that their sites should be readily available when accessing the Internet, and that blocking “occult” sites oversteps the mandate of CIPA and infringes on the Establishment Clause by favoring one religious expression over another.

In a statement, Rev. Kirk Thomas, Archdruid of the ADF, said that “only by free access to knowledge can everyone participate in the marketplace of ideas, guaranteeing true freedom for everyone,” while Selena Fox, speaking for Circle Sanctuary, said that they are disappointed in Salem Public Library’s “unwillingness to provide free and equal access to websites containing information on religions such as Wicca, Paganism, Native American traditional ways, and other paths that honor Nature.”

Rachael Watcher, one of the National Public Information Officers for Covenant of the Goddess, a 501c3 organization recognized as such by the United States government for 36 years, added that “the distinction between the labels ‘religious’ and ‘occult’ is an arbitrary one,” and that “one person’s religious group is another person’s occult group.”

It seems clear that no public library should be blocking access to minority religions, as Sylvia Linton, a librarian by profession and a Circle Sanctuary Community member said to me via email: “In this country, with our guarantees of freedom of religion and of speech, librarians respect the diversity of their patrons and allow them access to information without regard to the personal beliefs of the library staff.”

In addition, instances of “overblocking” by web filtering software here at home raise troubling inherent questions of how this technology is used by countries that don’t share our commitment to free speech or access to information. “Libraries should be bastions of free thought and information access; but, as the actions by the Salem public library demonstrate, Internet Freedom (and freedom of religion) aren’t just under attack overseas — the same censorship technologies used by oppressive regimes are finding their ways into our own back yards,” stated Sascha Meinrath, Director of New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative.

“As a growing compendium of evidence documents, technologies developed by U.S. companies and deployed throughout the country are the same ones being used in places like Syria, Iran, and North Korea — Salem would be wise to distance itself from practices that lump them in with some of the worst human rights violators around the globe.”

The option of an “occult” filter in content-control software should be of great concern to all who value religious liberty. The boundaries of what can be labeled “occult” or “cult” are so porous that it can include everything from information on Yoga to your daily horoscope.

The journalist and author Tom Wolfe once opined that “a cult is a religion with no political power,” an opinion that seems reinforced by the sites blocked by the Salem Public Library. Occult, when used as a term in the realm of Internet filtering, is a religious and cultural value judgment that in no way protects minors from obscene or indecent material within the context of CIPA.

There shouldn’t be an option to block the sites of minority religions for institutions receiving federal funds, and no library committed to free expression should enable such a filter if provided. One can only hope that this case goes beyond merely changing policy at Salem Public Library and instead institutes a precedent that changes the filtering industry, removing biased categories that have little purpose in a free society.

Links to full statements gathered for this story:

• Statement from Rev. Kirk Thomas, Archdruid, ADF
• Statement from Selena Fox and Bob Paxton of Circle Sanctuary
• Statement from COG National Public Information Officers
• Statement from Gwendolyn Reece Ph.D.
• Statement from Peg Aloi
• Statement from Phaedra Bonewits

“It’s unbelievable that I should have to justify why I want to access completely harmless websites on the Internet simply because they discuss a minority viewpoint. It’s wrong and demeaning to deny access to this kind of information.” - Anaka Hunter, The Associated Press

The default option of filtering occult and Pagan websites is an issue I’ve followed at this site over the years, its existence tied directly to the fact that Internet filtering software was initially developed by and for the Christian market. As such, the inherent values of that demographic are imprinted into the DNA of the web-filtering industry. These programs are then sold to schools, libraries, and government institutions, which can lead to controversy and litigation once individuals realize the bias inherent in the filter. At this point those original biased filtering lists have long since permeated into the secular filter market. Sadly, many (though certainly not all) libraries, schools, and public institutions take a “block everything until someone complains” policy when it comes to this issue.

I sincerely hope that this case goes to trial, as it’s long past time the “occult” filter, which inevitably includes a raft of non-Christian religious sites, was eliminated from any secular context. If a local Catholic parish wants to block a Wikipedia search for Wicca, fine, but no library or school should be engaging in the default restriction of these sites. Nor should any secular institution be purchasing software that was built on the prejudices and misconceptions of conservative Christian list-makers.

Oh, and in a final note, you’ll be glad to know that The Wild Hunt has (so far) escaped being placed in the “occult” category by Netsweeper, the filtering software used by the Missouri Public Library.

• The home of traditional 19th century Irish healer Biddy Early is up for auction. Current property owner Billy Loughnane is hoping that someone with a strong interest in Early will purchase the land, restore her cottage, and preserve it as a tourist spot. Biddy Early is perhaps one of the most famous of the female cunning folk, and her legend has only grown over the years.
• In June a new group blog, Feminism & Religion, launched. The main contributors are all feminist theologians and scholars, and was founded “in the hope that feminist scholars of religion — and all who are interested in these issues — will use this forum to share their ideas, insights, and experiences, so that this community of thinkers will be nurtured as we explore diverse and new directions.” Plenty of posts of interest to Pagans, Goddess worshipers, and feminist theologians to be found.
• Slate’s legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick, referencing a recent 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, explains why you can’t simply vote for sectarian prayers at government meetings: “It doesn’t matter if only 4 percent of the community is expressly excluded by references to a certain deity. It also doesn’t matter if only 1 percent of the community feels that way, or even if only two “hypersensitive” non-Christians object. The Bill of Rights is not subject to popular referendum. That’s why it’s called the Bill of Rights and not, say, American Idol.”
• Scholar danah boyd explains why “Real Names” policies on social networking sites are an abuse of power. She notes that: “people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power.” Considering the large number of Pagans who operate under pseudonyms on the Internet (and in their day-to-day lives) I can see this becoming an issue for our communities. For more on this check out the “My Name is Me” advocacy site, explaining the number of reasons why individuals should be free to choose their own names on the Internet. More from boyd on “radical transparency.” I’ll be following up on this issue soon.
• Here’s your Pagan facepalm for the weekend: two inebriated Odinists in the UK climbed up the scaffolding surrounding a Christian church, claiming they were holding a protest. “A witness said he heard police telling the pair it would have been a more effective protest had they not been drunk.” The younger of the two protesters refused an offered ladder and jumped down from ten feet, hurting his leg in the process.  No one was arrested, and no damage seemed to have been done (except to the one Odinist’s leg).
• Shock Till You Drop interviews writer/director Robin Hardy about “The Wicker Tree,” the themes running through it and its spiritual predecessor “The Wicker Man,” and the upcoming third film “The Wrath of the Gods.” The last film sounds very Wagnerian, and “the gods themselves get sucked into the melee.”
• The perfect storm for sensationalist coverage: A porn star gets busted for animal cruelty by leaving animals he was planning to sacrifice in a Santeria ceremony inside a hot van. Here’s the TMZ version of the same story.
• More on the Hindu America Seva Charities (HASC)  first-ever White House conference.
• Starting yesterday, a week of actions are planned to protest the expansion of the Snowbowl ski resort on the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, which includes the pumping of treated wastewater up the mountain to make fake snow. A coalition of local indigenous groups and Tribal Nations see this as a desecration that would be “like putting death on the mountain.” You can read my recent coverage of this issue, here.
• Here at Patheos, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus explains the dangers of one-stop shopping, especially when it comes to religion: “For polytheists, and I would suggest for Pagans more generally, there are no shortcuts. One never gets, in a metaphorical sense, to kill two birds with one stone with one’s daily activities and one’s spiritual life. And, I would argue, this is a very good thing.”
• Also at Patheos, columnist Gus diZerega responds to Christina Oakley Harrington’s talk on Pagan in Britain today, with some thoughts of his own.

That’s it for now! I may not be near a computer for much of today as I’ll be visiting one of Oregon’s sacred sites, so please forgive me if I don’t respond to comments or emails in a timely fashion. Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.

“It seems that since then, and especially this week, it’s become a little contest of the faiths- particularly Christianity versus Paganism- many of these Christian bloggers have taken it to the point of claiming it’s Spiritual Warfare. I’ll address that in a moment, but I’d also like my readership to know that Mrs. B has also received anonymous death threats via email and blogger comments… and that’s just taking things way too far.”

However, it looks like pluralism (and Paganism) won out over spiritual warfare and Internet threats. What started out ugly and mean-spirited became an opportunity for interfaith outreach, and the Pagan mom-blogs have acquired a new sense of solidarity they may not have had before. So congratulations again to Mrs. B and all the other Pagan mom-bloggers for turning what could have been an ugly, disheartening experience into a triumph. The rest of the Pagan blogosphere applauds you!

San Francisco Peaks Update: I have written at some length concerning the battle over a ski resort on the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona creating snow from treated wastewater, what a coalition of local indigenous groups and Tribal Nations see as a desecration that would be “like putting death on the mountain.” It seemed to me like Arizona politicians didn’t believe there could be sacred land in their state. Now Indian Country follows up on this story with the latest insult to the beliefs of Native Americans living in Arizona.

“The Forest Service has scheduled a meeting to hear Hopi Tribe objections to wastewater-enabled snowmaking for a ski resort on Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks at the same time it has approved the start of construction on the snowmaking’s infrastructure. A former Hopi Tribal chairman and the grassroots group of which he is a part of hope an upcoming meeting on the San Francisco Peaks (Nuvatuqui) will provide a voice for tribal members who oppose the use of wastewater for the snowmaking at a resort on mountains sacred to a number of area tribes. But at about the same time the Forest Service planned the May 31 “listening session” with Hopi tribal members it also authorized construction to begin on a pipeline to convey the wastewater used to make the artificial snow.”

An emergency injunction appeal to construction was denied, despite there being an active appeal on environmental grounds underway. The “listening session” with the Hopi Tribe will be the only forum at this point that includes Native voices, it looks like Coconino National Forest supervisor M. Earl Stewart won’t be much different from former supervisor Nora B. Rasure, who doesn’t see any issue with desecrating a sacred mountain for the purpose of a prolonged skiing season. As indigenous leaders tell the United Nations that respecting their beliefs will help preserve the environment, the Forest Service in Coconino has seemingly decided that money and politics trump everything else.

Pagans on Wikipedia: Over at PNC-Minnesota (and reprinted at Patheos.com) Cara Schulz writes an editorial concerning a snowballing trend of Wikipedia deleting Pagan-oriented articles. She cites the a policy of goal-post shifting regarding what sources are deemed acceptable. For instance, the Pagan Newswire Collective doesn’t meet guidelines, nor do the published writings of Pagan academics.

“PNC has staff with formal journalism degrees, experience working as a reporters, producers, and editors in mainstream media, and PNC-Minnesota follows an editorial process similar to most any other newsroom in the country.   Yet PNC-Minnesota is dismissed as  “a self-published group blog which isn’t going to meet guidelines for reliable sources.” Discounting sources is a common theme in the Paganistan deletion discussion.  A paper by Dr. Murphy Pizza, an anthropologist who spent five years studying the Paganistan community, is also considered not a reliable source because she is a Pagan. I’m assuming this same standard would then apply to The Pomegranate:  The International Journal of Pagan Studies, Chas Clifton’s book “Her Hidden Children:  The Rise of Wicca And Paganism in America,” and is probably the reason Ronald Hutton will not publicly say he is a Pagan.”

Schulz wonders if there’s a double-standard going on where papers and articles published by Christian academics are accepted as reliable sources on Christian articles or if the work of environmentalist-minded scholars pass muster on climate-related articles. I personally think that much of this problem can be solved by having a more engaged team of Pagan-friendly editors at Wikipedia who are willing to go to bat for these articles, and work to constantly improve them, not just when items are flagged for deletion. The rest of the problem will only be solved once we take our media seriously, and move collectively forward in building institutions and reputations that pass muster.

In Other News:

• Annwfn, one of oldest pieces of Pagan-owned land available for public use in the United States is having money troubles. They are trying to raise $2,300 by June 1st, all donations are tax deductible and go to a good cause. Donation information can be found, here. Please spread the word.
• Remember Michele Bachmann’s gay-bashing friend Bradlee Dean? The one I recently mentioned here? It seems he was invited to give the opening prayer at the Minnesota House and managed to offend almost everyone. Response: here. For the record Dean was invited to speak by Rep. Ernie Leidiger, R-Mayer.
• Thomas David DuBois looks at the relationship between religion and government in China. He notes that “religion in China has never been treated as a matter of personal choice. It’s hard to imagine that the current regime would suddenly start to view things differently.”
• Tropaion gives a rundown of Hellenic Polytheist groups and pages at Facebook.
• David Barton: National Hero of Faith.
• A Hippocratic oath for the Internet.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBieYjxUj5Q

“…you are not engaged in and will not accept payment for any of the following: (1) any illegal activity, (2) adult entertainment oriented products or services (all media types; internet, telephone, printed material, etc), (3) internet/mail order/telephone order pharmacies (where fulfillment of medication is performed with an internet or telephone consultation, absent a physical visit with a physician including re-importation of pharmaceuticals from foreign countries.), (4) internet/mail order/telephone order firearm or weapon sales, (5) internet/mail order/telephone order cigarette or tobacco sales, (6) drug paraphernalia, (7) occult materials, (8) hate products, (9) online gambling (10) lotteries, raffles, or gambling, (11) escort services…”

No occult materials? Writer and defender of all things subcultural Warren Ellis has some questions regarding these restrictions, like, just what is and isn’t “occult”, exactly?

Hold on. Can someone explain this to me? What defines an occult material? I had a quick Google.According to Fox News, a pink ouija board made by Hasbro is an “occult material.” Informed Christians tells me that Harry Potter and Pokemon are occult materials. Are Tarot cards occult materials? Divining rods? Alan Moore books and CDs?

I’m presuming this is just some kind of weird boilerplate text they’ve picked up from somewhere, and that in America credit card processors don’t like you rubbing the spooky stuff. And someone will educate me on that in the comments. But “occult materials” would seem to me to be so ill-defined as to cover an awful lot of things. So, if you fancy the sound of Square, but perhaps sell things like books or garments or goat heads consecrated in Satan’s piss, you might want to drop them a line first to get their definition of “occult materials.”

The generous interpretation of the “no occult” rule I’ve read is that this is boilerplate text supplied by the credit card companies, and was most likely penned to protect them from liability in cases of fortune-telling scams (Google Checkout once had similar restrictions). Of course, terms like “hate products” and “adult entertainment oriented products” are equally loaded. You think it means porn and Nazis, but who’s making the definitions? Are offensive t-shirts hate speech? Is a book on Kink Magic an “adult entertainment oriented product”? Taken together, do they make it impossible for a Pagan festival vendor to use this service? Finally, Square was created because an artist couldn’t sell his work on the spot, but would many of the hypothetical artists that might want to use this service fall afoul of the occult, hate, or adult restrictions? Could you sell “Piss Christ” with Square?

So far no statement has come from Square on this matter, despite the topic rolling around the Internet for a few days now. Their Twitter feed is silent. I suppose we’ll wait and see if there’s a clarification or revision coming, or if they’ll continue to use the restrictive (and possibly illegal if challenged in a court of law under religious freedom grounds) boilerplate.

Update: The company’s FAQ specifically mentions that fortune-telling is prohibited because it carries a high risk of charge-back (ie the customer disputing the charge after the fact). No word on other “occult” items or services.