Thus, the alternative is a shift to digital socialism---solves for IP theft and counterfeits

Let us begin this chapter with a simple observation: no country will ever become wealthy when the critical infrastructure powering its economy is owned and controlled by foreign corporations. South Africa’s modern history arises from a European-led invasion by the Dutch East India Company, who stole the land and brutally exploited the indigenous people for profit. Critical infrastructure and resources – railroads, mines, industrial equipment, housing, and land – were dominated by white settlers at the expense of the African people. White authorities also waged psychological and conceptual warfare on the population through the imposition of colonial interpretations of religion, culture, and political economy. Bantu education sought to instill passivity and acceptance of race and class-based inequality. Today, US-based corporations are colonising digital technology. Instead of taking over the land, they are colonising critical digital infrastructure and human knowledge. They seek to own the world’s knowledge and culture (intellectual property), the material infrastructure (cloud server farms, transoceanic cables, and other hardware), the code powering computers (software), and information about people and nature (data). Converting knowledge into private property is foundational to their system of domination. When Big Tech corporations do share knowledge, it is done in ways beneficial to themselves. Google and Facebook, for example, are happy to “open source” some of their artificial intelligence software (e.g. Tensor Flow and PyTorch) because they use it to monetise Big Data surveillance.xviii Yet if their access to surveillance data were shut out by new technologies and privacy laws, they would close off much of their “open source” technology and increase the share of proprietary code in the software market. The problem we face today is digital capitalism and authoritarianism, not simply surveillance capitalism. As I previously wrote in the Mail & Guardian, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) narrative claims Big Data, intellectual property, centralised clouds, the Internet of Things, “smart” cities littered with surveillance, automation, algorithmic decision-making, Big Tech corporations, and surveillance capitalism are the way of the future. A creation of the ultra-capitalist World Economic Forum (WEF), the 4IR concept is an elite construct which serves a useful purpose at the periphery of empire by steering inquiry about tech into the WEF agenda. Like the colonial missionaries of past, they preach a new religion, the 4IR, as the saviour of society. Not surprisingly, the tools they promote are the tools of the masters: corporate ownership, intellectual property, centralised clouds, Big Data surveillance, the profit incentive, and private production for the market. This will not work for the common person. As Audrey Lorde put it, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. The threat of proprietary technology – and the selective sharing of knowledge by corporations – was captured by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who stated in 2007: Freedom is an ongoing process, and not an end in itself … We are not shy to use the word freedom, and do so in contexts where its importance is not always recognised. In a digital world, there are many threads to a hard-won liberty. There are those who take our ideas and lock them up for business gain. There are those who will take the fruits of the human mind and lock them up, dishing them out to us in meted amounts for a fee that locks most of our people out. And there are laws that are reserved for business reasons and changed to rob society of its own rights ... To paraphrase Edmund Burke, who said, ‘the only thing necessary for the triumph of those who take away our freedom in the digital world is for organisations [like universities] to do nothing.’ But there are people, like our keynote speakers … who are not content to do nothing. Indeed, there is a whole movement that is rapidly gaining momentum worldwide arising out of the work of people like Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman, creating socially responsible businesses out of the very freedoms that we are talking about. Free Software and Open Source, Free and Open Resources for Education, new ways to create and share cultural artifacts such as music, writing, and art – all of these are changing the world for the better. Unfortunately, intellectuals who believe themselves to be "critical" of Big Tech have formulated a liberal imperialist narrative called the "techlash" that fails to address digital colonialism. These USEurocentric "critics", drawn from elite Western university and media outlets, ignore the centrality of property and the Free Software Movement. Much like the Sullivan Principles during apartheid,xix their solutions offer minor reforms that maintain US interests, such as weak privacy laws, "competitive markets" created through antitrust, and corporate ownership of the digital ecosystem. The "techlash" extends Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" to tech, where nothing fundamentally different can occur other than what we have seen in the West. If we are going to create a society that prioritises freedom and equality, we will have to develop a new framework to restructure the digital ecosystem. This requires more than the array of Free Software technologies outlined in this guide. We must also have supportive laws, critical education, and a grassroots movement to counter digital colonialism and replace it with a democratic digital commons owned and controlled directly by the people. There is no way around this. Laws like POPIA are designed to safeguard surveillance capitalism. This can be seen in its provisions that allow Big Data surveillance to flourish with mild restrictions said to “protect” your privacy. Under POPIA, exemptions include data processed for national security, such as “defense or public safety”, instances in which “the public interest in the processing outweighs, to a substantial degree, any interference with the privacy of the data subject”, and instances where the processing provides “a clear benefit to the data subject or third party that outweighs … interference with [their] privacy”. The “public interest” includes “national security”, “the prevention, detection and prosecution of offences”, “important economic and financial interests of a public body”, and “historical, statistical or research activity” (as well as the “special importance of the interest in freedom of expression”). POPIA also allows people to “consent” to Big Data surveillance through terms and conditions, defined as “any voluntary, specific and informed expression of will in terms of which permission is given for the processing of personal information.” Yet we know that nobody can read these terms and conditions, even if they wanted to. One study showed that the average person would have to spend about 76 working days per year to read the Terms and Conditions of the websites they visit. Google South Africa sent me about 20,000 words of “terms and conditions” covering the Google technologies used in South African schools. Users can either “consent” to Google’s data processing, or they can’t use its technologies at all. Forcing people to endure surveillance just to visit a website, join a social network, or use a weather app, on the basis that they “consent” is unjust. Yet POPIA does not appear to prohibit this “take it or leave it” surveillance society. Digital capitalism has a business model crisis. It concentrates and extracts wealth, cedes authoritarian control over digital experiences to transnational corporations unaccountable to the public, and subjects users to surveillance, advertising, and manipulation. If it moves to a “pay-for-ethicaltreatment” model, it will generate class inequality, especially for the poor who have no disposable income. In a commons-based system of digital socialism, knowledge is free and open for all to consume, modify, and share. Free Software, interoperability, federated services, and decentralisation tools provide the public with the means to own and control their experiences. To support the global commons, production and maintenance of digital technology and culture could be paid for by the rich through progressive taxation and heavy taxes on Big Tech corporations. This requires a Tech New Deal that transforms the digital ecosystem from a profit-seeking enterprise into a publicly funded global commons. A movement for digital socialism dovetails with efforts to build an environmentally sustainable global economy based on wealth redistribution and equality, not limitless growth. Many of the core technologies powering the digital revolution were funded by the state, including computers, the internet, and GPS. The state also supports the education of computer scientists and engineers. Research and development institutions like the CSIR could help develop decentralisation technologies like FreedomBox instead of surveillance systems like Cmore. University researchers could work on voice assistants like Almond, which does not spy on its users, as they are doing at Stanford University. With enough funds from taxes, talented developers could be awarded comfortable middle-class salaries to work on public interest technologies, instead of joining exploitative institutions like Google and Microsoft, who pay researchers a few million rand per year. As noted in previous chapters, government policy can require the use of People’s Tech in schools, universities, and the public sector; protect user privacy; and teach people about tech freedom. But none of this will occur without you. Technology corporations have concentrated enormous sums of wealth into the hands of a few, and they will not give it up without a serious fight. It doesn’t help that elected representatives are tempted to exploit corporate tech for their own surveillance and control. Nhlanhla Mabaso, a champion of Free Software, headed the Open Source Centre – since renamed the Meraka Institute – at the CSIR. (“Meraka” is Sotho for “open grazing land”.) In a research interview, Mabaso told me some of his colleagues argue the government’s Free and Open Source Software policy preference means “open source is law” in South Africa. Efforts by Mabaso and his peers once aimed to undermine the power of corporations like Microsoft from colonising the South African tech ecosystem. Decades earlier, anti-apartheid activists protested against the use of computers from tech corporations like IBM to facilitate the apartheid system. They eventually forced IBM to withdraw its business operations from South Africa. During the struggle against apartheid education, Zwelakhe Sisulu asserted: We are not prepared to accept any ‘alternative’ to Bantu Education which is imposed from above. This includes American or any other imperialist alternatives designed to safeguard their selfish interests in the country, by promoting elitist and divisive ideas and values which will ensure foreign monopoly exploitation continues. Only through democratic institutions and committees could students, parents, and teachers take control of their own education. “We are fighting for the right to self-determination in the education sphere as in all other spheres … It has become a struggle of the whole community with the involvement of all sections of the community”, Sisulu said. In the neoapartheid era, a new wave of US tech transnationals are pushing oppressive products into the country once again. A People's Tech movement to kick Big Tech out of Africa could form a critical part of the global protests against the enduring legacy of racism and colonialism. Activists across the world could unite to form a targeted boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement centered on Big Tech corporations and their supporters in the United States. South African communities are tasked to build a digital ecosystem that the people own and control, so they are not subjects of American or any other imperialist powers. People’s Tech for People’s Power, a holistic solution based on a Free and Open Source technology commons, socialist legal solutions, people's education, subsidies for public interest technology, and a vigorous grassroots movement, is urgently needed to avert disaster and build a truly democratic and egalitarian society.