The Luddites have been unfairly characterized as anti-technology fanatics. Okay, they did wreck factories and smash machinery but their beef wasn't with technology...it was with the Capitalists. The Owners were dismantling a way of life without consulting or considering the people living that life. Happiness, as measured by the profit margin, was conflated with technical progress and success in business. This was and is what Luddites oppose...the annexation of work, of life, by a class of people willing to equate humans with machines.
Annexation is coming in the virtual world also...SOPA is a landgrab scheme to co-opt creativity and ideas in favor of profit. It is a canard. This law will fundamentally change the relationship between the user and provider of information, again in favor of profit. It is the bastard child of original copyright protection which was intended to stimulate the market in favor of creativity...SOPA will strangle it in the cradle. A new generation of Luddites is being energized...some in the Hacktivist community are beginning to create an alternative internet, The Darknet, where the flow of information can remain free and neutral. Over reaction? Maybe, but if SOPA passes and you still want your YouTube then get your wifi on...The Darknet is coming to a hotspot near you.
Rather than withdrawing into darkness the Internet Archive is turning up the lights. The aim is to digitize all the information humans have created and make it available to everyone for free...the Internet's Library of Alexandria. Implausible? Impossible? Inevitable is the word. And the landlords ask "What about intellectual property rights?" Well, someday we are going to stop treating ideas like real estate...and happiness like profit, and humans like machines...then we will all be Luddites.
That's all I have for now.
Annexation is coming in the virtual world also...SOPA is a landgrab scheme to co-opt creativity and ideas in favor of profit. It is a canard. This law will fundamentally change the relationship between the user and provider of information, again in favor of profit. It is the bastard child of original copyright protection which was intended to stimulate the market in favor of creativity...SOPA will strangle it in the cradle. A new generation of Luddites is being energized...some in the Hacktivist community are beginning to create an alternative internet, The Darknet, where the flow of information can remain free and neutral. Over reaction? Maybe, but if SOPA passes and you still want your YouTube then get your wifi on...The Darknet is coming to a hotspot near you.
Rather than withdrawing into darkness the Internet Archive is turning up the lights. The aim is to digitize all the information humans have created and make it available to everyone for free...the Internet's Library of Alexandria. Implausible? Impossible? Inevitable is the word. And the landlords ask "What about intellectual property rights?" Well, someday we are going to stop treating ideas like real estate...and happiness like profit, and humans like machines...then we will all be Luddites.
That's all I have for now.
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