Query results: February, 2008

I wish it was a world where we would burst in laugh­ter when told

• that you can fight ter­ror with war
• that wars are winnable
• that we lock ani­mals for their life­time in cages just for the plea­sure of gaz­ing at them
• that talk­ing about one’s mis­takes is the surest way to end one’s pub­lic career
• that one piece of paper giv­en at birth deter­mines most of our free­doms in life,

and it would not be a bit­ter smile, but a sin­cere, joy­ful burst of laugh­ter, because these ideas would sound so extra­or­di­nar­i­ly absurd that it would be the only sin­cere answer.

And this world, we work hard not to cre­ate it, since our chil­dren know none of our curi­ous axioms, and we train them and our­selves dai­ly to erase this laughter.

I recent­ly dis­cov­ered three inter­est­ing echoes to the Life’s Not Read-Only website.

• Kevin Kel­ly right­ly insists on the intrin­sic copy­ing nature of the Inter­net, and explains how eco­nom­ic val­ue can be derived from copy­able things. It’s a clear, well thought-out arti­cle. [adden­dum: this nice­ly sec­onds an arti­cle Taco Buiten­huis wrote last sum­mer, Mon­ey for ser­vice and your con­tent for free.]
• The Steal This Film II movie was very enjoy­able. The mak­ers have quit the pirate-talk and made a fine, intel­li­gent doc­u­men­tary which will reach out to more than just p2p enthu­si­asts. High­light quote from the movie: “Music did not start with record­ings, it will not end with file­shar­ing”.
• Final­ly, and by far the most sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­ery: Eben Moglen on Anar­chism Tri­umphant: Free Soft­ware and the Death of Copy­right. I found the text extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pow­er­ful. Moglen writes with a strength, con­fi­dence and elo­quence that were breath-tak­ing and delight­ed both the free soft­ware advo­cate, and the curi­ous occa­sion­al read­er in me.