TomPaine.com: Stopping The Privatization Of Public Knowledge:
"Preserving the information commons may not be a topic of kitchen-table conversation just yet. But it is fast becoming a hot issue. With a few more turns of the screw by the content autocrats -- snooping on people's computers, lawsuits against individual file-sharers, intrusive new attempts to control personal behavior -- the fledgling movement to reclaim popular control of the information commons may explode into a mainstream juggernaut."This article points out how absurd our laws have become as a company sued an avant-garde composer over a few minutes of silence. (To which the composer replied, "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence.") The information commons might not be a kitchen-table topic, but it's definitely a weblog topic. Lawrence Lessig has done an amazing job of popularizing the problems with our copyright and patent systems in this community. Now it's a matter of bringing this subject to the attention of others. [link via sotd]