Saturday, June 14, 2008

Where are we going from here?

Most people nowadays (at least in the western world) would cringe at the idea of a military junta or a 13-century-style dictatorial monarchic or feudal system. The reason is obvious: Systems like those take away freedom from the masses in favor of a small elites. People can't share their ideas without fear of retaliation and there's pretty much no room for fair competition. You're either at the top making the rules or you're at bottom, stuck with having to follow whatever rules are shoved down on you.

Politically speaking, we're not living in a terribly bad system. We can send letters to our representatives when we want our concerns heard and we can boycott treacherous politicians on the next election.

But on another front, as we move deeper into a digital era, we hear more and more about intellectual property, digital rights managements, and lobbying by industries. We're even starting to see things like C-61 - which has essentially been dubbed the "Canadian DCMA, only much worse".

There's active research going into DRM hardware. What stops people 5 years from now from abusing these systems to promote censorship of material that degrade their political opinions?

What's stopping corporations today from engaging in barratry-like litigations to eliminate competition, or to set legal precedences for further harassment and political gain?

I don't know what can stop it, but money sure seems to be an easy way to continue pushing special interest groups' agendas deeper into the law.

No comments:

Post a Comment