(2003-11-04) Walker Death Of Internet Freedom

John Walker has become deeply and increasingly pessimistic about the future of liberty (Freedom) and freedom of speech (Free Speech), particularly in regard to the Internet... The dark future I dread will be the consequence of the adoption, by marketing or mandate, of a collection of individual technologies (Digital Rights Management, Trusted Computing, Secure Internet, etc.), each of which can be advocated as beneficial in its own right. But these technologies, taken together, have consequences less apparent to many yet, I believe, quite evident to some now promoting them... If implemented and extrapolated to their logical conclusion, the result will be an Internet profoundly different from today's and at substantial variance with the vision of its original designers. More than any innovation in the last century, the Internet empowers individuals to spontaneously teach, learn, explore, communicate, form communities, and collaborate. Measured relatively, this individual empowerment comes at the expense of the power of governments and large commercial enterprises, thereby reversing a trend toward concentration of power more than a century old which has acted to reduce free citizens and productive individuals to mere subjects and consumers. Power, especially concentrated power, is rarely relinquished willingly.

Steven Levy covered this.