Don’t know much about the complexities of the politics (big picture) of the Internet, but I imagine that the freedoms we hope to continue enjoying and exploring here are preserved and protected in the same way all freedom is preserved and protected.
So I quote here from a post by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig as part of a blog conversation the purpose of which is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is what he said, some of which is quoted by b!X (which is how I found Lessig’s entire post), and some of which (the part that I think is most important) I quote here:
My point is that if this community does not begin to spend at least as much time as it spends watching Hollywood movies fighting Hollywood, or to spend at least as much money as it gives DSL providers on those who fight broad based control , then this extraordinary space that you….. built will be taken away. Not by superior blogs, and not by witty /. postings. But in the old-fashioned way: through regulators who have been bent by the forces of those who can and do buy Washington…..
You say I should stop complaining, and open up a blog….. I say that in addition to blogging, and coding and whatever, we’ve got to do something that matters to these people who think a blog is a typo. You, or we, or someone has got to get this community to deliver a different kind of message. One that east coast coders can read; one that says: we won’t let the freedom we ….. built be regulated away.
And it’s not just a matter of getting to the point where everyone in Congress has his/her own blog, although that certainly wouldn’t hurt the cause — if, of course, their blogs all had a Comments feature and if we all used it. Heh.