Concerned that the internet is getting less and less free? Well, you probably should be; what with the FBI watching (excellent diary by Turkana); AT&T beginning a new content filtering programfor their friends in Hollywood; Linspire signing a covenant with Microsoft that protects their users from so-called 'patents' infringement, and the list just goes on.
According to reports, the FBI has a list of nearly half a million suspects in their war on terror (Dkos daily visitors=500,000, nah, just a coincidence), which sounds way too high (though they should definitely get those Ron Paul diarists; just sayin')--not sure how Linux can save the day in this case, though if there really are that many suspects, it's hard to imagine how they can process all that info--even MySQL has its limits, don't you know.
AT&T, formerly SBC communications, has agreed to forfeit their common carrier status help hunt down the notorious thought criminals intellectual copyright infringers cold-blooded pirates robbing the American economy of its lifeblood, and again, that seems like a job akin to Hercules cleaning out the Aegean stables--how are they going to know which are the evil bits, and which the paid-for ones? Which the innocent Linux distributions, or Jamendo albums and which the Britney Spears 'pirated' ones? Does that include monitoring and opening up every email attachment, IRC transfer, Usenet download, naughty bits pictures, letters to grandma with a shot of the kids and voice/podcasts sent over the holidays? Are they going to close ports 22, 25, 80, and so on to 60 some thousand? Won't that have a wee bit of a negative effect on e-commerce, as well as pissing off all their customers?
Meanwhile, Linspire has signed a 'patent protection' scheme with Microsoft that protects all its users from litigation from the Redmond giant; are potential users of its Click 'N Run system, soon to go live for Ubuntu, followed by a number of other Linux distributions going to steer clear for fear of a Trojan Horse laid by MS?
I mean, I like to claim prescience, but this is such short notice; give me a couple of weeks to practice saying I told you so, at the very least. In spite of all the seeming bad news, I think that things will work out in the end; just how much damage is done to the US economy, its educational infrastructure and tech sectors before things settle down remains to be seen.
AT&T just effectively tossed itself on the funeral pyre of failed business models, along side the noteworthy RIAA, MPAA, and associated companies; do they really have no knowledge of the War on Drugs, The War on Poverty, The War on Terror, and Whip Inflation Now? In each and every case, the problem got worse, not better; if this is The War on Bytes, then in short order all content will be nearly free--it's getting easier, not harder to exchange digital information, and will only continue to do so, at an ever accelerating rate. If you want to pick a losing battle, then pick up a Lance and have a tilt at Moore's Law; it's not like a friggin' Windmill, just sitting there, but getting faster and faster and faster. Good luck hitting that target.
And as for Linspire, and it's cruddy last-second deal, well, count me (and likely just about every other Linux user on the planet) out of using your Click 'N Run service; I can install all that stuff from the Ubuntu and Fedora 7 repositories on my own, thank ye very kindly. What slugs.
It turns out that information does want to be free, and though I would never advise anyone to infringe copyrights, there's plenty of Free, Legal, and Open Source stuff out there, ready for download, though you may have to do it via http instead of bit torrent, as that will certainly be the first casualty in this War on Bytes.
I've been fully open source for more than two weeks now, and there's no looking back; though I admit I wavered when I saw the Macbook on sale, I wavered, but ever so briefly--until I saw the price tag: $1300, for a first generation one, and if I spend $700, or nearly half the price, I can get an Asus computer, fully loaded, with my favorite Linux distro (Ubuntu? Fedora 7?) running on it. Sadly, I may also forgo getting an iPhone, as it requires getting an iTunes Music Store account for activation, and I'm guessing that's because you can only play tunes purchased through the store on it--hope not, but it's got me worried. Maybe version 3.0.
Time to mirror the repositories on DVD, download a bunch of distros, and sit tight. Just in case. Linux users may be on that list of 500,000.