[free-sklyarov] Compromise? Balance?

[proclus at iname.com]

I'm in full agreement with this, and sorry I didn't add the
antiglobalists to my earlier list.  Bringing them in would make us much
stronger IMHO, with a much broader base.  

Regards,
proclus
http://www.gnu-darwin.org/

On 28 Jul, Paul Gowder wrote:
> I'll add my own two centimes to this one.  Such commentary basically being: 
> that's why we're on the march.  The new anti-corporate activism is the 
> opposing force to this "total control" universe, and the geektavists in the 
> world need to get with the program.
> 
> It's not just the internet that creates the power 
> structure.  Fundamentally, the total informational control over the 
> internet is just a new dimension to the total economic control (ie. 
> globalism, with capital being mobile and labor being forced to stay in one 
> place by immigration laws, with the expected monopolistic effects), the 
> total political control (of bought politicians) and the total environmental 
> control (again, capital is mobile.  Nature is not.  if capital were 
> prohibited from flocking to nations with no environmental protections, 
> maybe the people of the several nations would have some power.) that 
> corporations presently have.  The Sklyarov affair is archetypal.  Capital, 
> a corporation, reached across international boundaries to pluck out the eye 
> that offended it.  It did so using its political control to enforce its 
> economic and informational control.  All Adobe didn't do was chop down an 
> old-growth forest.
> 
> It's all the same problem.  It's all the same solution -- weaken corporate 
> power, increase democratic power.  Hence the people in Genoa protesting the 
> G-8 are working for exactly the same thing as the people in San Jose 
> protesting the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov.
> 
> The internet is Not Special.
> 
>          -Paul
> 
> ps.  Love the e-mail address Eric.
> 
> At 04:03 PM 7/28/01, Eric C. Grimm wrote:
>>William Ahern says:
>>
>>But, the internet gives power to the people. The internet is the great
>>equalizer, and that's why all of those lusers out in dot.com land are so
>>frustrated rent seeking.
>>
>>But, in order to keep it that way, and to keep the capacity for change in
>>OUR hands, we need to keep it open. (that means fighting things like the
>>DMCA and and also more subtle things like data-differentiation on  the
>>network, like what the big backbone providers are pushing for (think about
>>the ATM craze)).
>>
>>So, on-the-whole things are probably brighter than what one could
>>superficially take from your piece  . . .
>>
>>__________________________
>>
>>I certainly agree with you, at least to a point, William.  The Interent
>>certainly CAN be (or, more acurately, can become again) the "great
>>equalizer."  But certainly, no particular future is foreordained or
>>inevitable.
>>
>>The Internet is what we (collectively) make of it.  And, if we are not
>>careful, the Internet and information technology generally it is at least
>>equally likely to become -- as professor Lessig puts it -- "the instrument
>>of perfect control" as it is to enhance freedom.  Based on observing both
>>technological and legislative developments for some time, I hate to say that
>>I must put myself squarely in the camp of the "pessimists" along with
>>Lawrence Lessig -- and perhaps our own resident editorialist / "journalist"
>>/ kibitzer from Wired.
>>
>>At least if the arrow of legislation over the past several years points in
>>the general direction of where we are headed (and we can look to other signs
>>like software licenses or frequency of surreptitious insertion of data
>>collection mechanisms into both Interenet content and "client" software
>>code), then I have to say the day of "perfect control" may be much closer at
>>hand than the dawn of "perfect freedom."  But again, that will be so only if
>>people make it so.
>>
>>What say you?
> 
> 
> --
> 	-Paul Gowder
> 
> "It's because they're stupid. That's why everyone does everything."
>      - Homer Simpson
> 
> 	<paul at paultopia.net>
> 
> --
> 
> 
> 
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