Wednesday, July 16, 2003
: The situation described in Hot spots elude RIAA dragnet @ CNET News.com is at once inspiring and a harbinger of conflict to come. From the article, "Increasingly, cafes, parks and even private homes are offering access to Net where no registration is required. With people logging in and out without offering identities, it becomes virtually impossible for groups such as the RIAA to track down the identity of copyright infringers using these nodes." It seems inevitable that paranoid lawmakers will quicklyly substitute "FBI" for "RIAA" because we already know that "copyright infringers" is a synonym for "terrorists" and thus outlaw this shining bastion of anonymity -- and by extension privacy.
The conflict will eventually be freedom vs. security. Which one is more valuable?
