Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It's a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others.
The Internet may well disempower the nation state, but at the same time, it also strengthens certain specific state functions - like surveillance. As a political entity, it doesn't empower the nation sate. It creates the availability of much more data than the digestive system of the nation state could possibly assimilate.
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
I think the 'counterculture' believes that there are ways to manage being the world's most powerful country that involve creation of consensus - ruling by virtuous example rather than by force of arms.
They seem to have forgotten that, and are back saying the only purpose of P2P networks is for illegal trading of owned goods. We claim part of the reason for P2P is for legal trading of what ought to be in public domain. And what is in public domain in many cases.
Google, Amazon, Apple. Any number of cloud providers and computer service providers who can increasingly limit your access to your own information, control all your processing, take away your data if they want to, and observe everything you do; in a way, that does give them some leverage over your own life.
Any powerful technology has sauce for the goose and the gander... It's just an extension of humanity.
I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods.
If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.
If you have the 'Total Information Awareness' project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs - but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America.
The 'Total Information Awareness' project is truly diabolical - mostly because of the legal changes which have made it possible in the first place. As a consequence of the Patriot Act, government now has access to all sorts of private and commercial databases that were previously off limits.
In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.
Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.
There are a lot of kids out there copying and distributing movies - not because they care about seeing the movies or sharing them with their friends, but because they want to stick it to the movie business.
I'm still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.
Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.
You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
The stratosphere is my church.
