When I first read the slashdot article "Lawrence Lessig Answers Your Questions" (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/21/155221) I cried, which is really saying something as I do not cry often. And since them I have been having a wide variety of fixed emotions. But I think it settled down to being scared. Part of my fear can best be described by the following article "The Coming Storm" by Bruce Bell (http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/articles/comingstorm.html). The other part of my fear is the fact that very few people understand what the existence of the Internet really means, and even fewer people see the upcoming battle. I know I didn't fully grasp what is going on until I read the Lawrence Lessig responses. We have a fundamental paradigm shift on our hands and hardly any one sees it. Hardly anyone sees that in with the existence of the Internet it is going to imposable to control the flow of information, period. The only way to stop this flow of information is to ban people all together from the Internet. Any sort of censorship and copy protection is going to be defeated, plain and simple. What is even scarier is that if Richard Stallman article "The Right to Read" (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html) was worded slightly differently I have a felling many people will not see the problem with the picture he is painting. However, what really is upsetting me lately is that I have absolutely know idea how to get the typical person to understand the magnitude of what is going on. I truly fell that the upcoming issues over the free flow of information are major, very major. Even bigger than the terrorist attack on the U.S. However, hardly any one is even aware of it, and I don't know how to make them aware.
So, my point of posting this is to hopefully open up some discussion on what is really going to happen and to address the key problem that has really gotten me down lately: How the hell do you get the average person to understand the full magnitude of what the Internet means? And how do you explain how the DMCA is just downright wrong, and how if the various media originations (such as the RIAA, the MPAA) had there way we would be living in a world exactly as Richard Stallman explains. Or even how to get them to understand that the picture Richard Stallman is painting is just wrong in more ways than once. I have never been so serious about anything in my life and would really like some input here. I have felt certain ways against other issues in the past but all of them are extremely minor compared to this. Also, if you know of better ways places to post this please let me know. Yours, Kevin. _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat at freenetproject.org http://lists.freenetproject.org/mailman/listinfo/chat
