People in power have always tried to prevent the common folk from obtaining knowledge that threatens their power. This happened in the 16th century, and it is happening now.
Information advantage has always equalled power.
The group in society that can control what the other groups know and don’t know will rise to power in every other aspect. Therefore, information technology has always been policed and even militarized to some extent, by any group that obtains the ability to control it.
It has been the case since the dawn of civilisation that some group has told everybody else what the world looks like, how it works, and what happens in it. (Usually, that group is placed at the centre of that particular world view in one way or another.) This continues today, with governments all over the world trying to put their spin of events on the news flow, putting themselves in a good light to literally get away with murder.
The quest for the net’s liberty is not a fight for some silly right to download free music. It is much larger than that: it breaks a hegemony that has stood for millennia — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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