Sat, 27 Feb 2010

The Future Won’t Be Free

Ah, yes, we took the digital acid. Anything free is by definition bad, so much so that using free software could get you declared an enemy of the state. (Sign me up for that!)

These folks seem to think that we shouldn't have a right to read, that history should be locked down and doled out, and that knowledge must be controlled. They long for the Middle Ages, before the printing press, when human knowledge was their exclusive province, and those questioning their authority could be inquired after.

Pardon my Anglo-Saxon, but fuck them ... information not only wants to be free, it will be. And there's no power in heaven or on earth that can stop it now. The future will be free, one way or another.

In the long run, the first decade of the Web could come to be seen as a momentary aberration—an echo of '60s free culture when we all took the bad, digital acid. So, media companies, on behalf of all misdirected Internet visionaries, I'm sorry. We like you—we really do—and we don't want a world without you. If you can hold on until we all have new kinds of screens, and new sets of expectations, you'll be fine. You'll be different, but fine. Just, please, don't take my word for it this time. Ask around.

(link) [Newsweek]

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