<nettime> re: Napster hurts free software

["Steven Meinking" <meinking@earthlink.net>]

As if on cue, for the purposes of our discussion, the following article
was front and center on the NY Times today: 

http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/05/biztech/articles/10digital.html

The article discusses a darling of a program called Freenet that enables
users to anonymously distribute files while eliminating all potential
traces to distributors.  The program's author has the greater ambition of
thwarting any attempt to control the traffic of digital information. 

The question is not whether free software will disappear.  Rather, the
question is how much longer will current intellectual property rights laws
stand in a world of rapid, and anonymous, global circulation? 

- Steven Meinking

Texts and Projects: http://home.earthlink.net/~meinking

"I know of no better aim of life than that of perishing, _animae magnae
prodigus_, in pursuit of the great and the impossible."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, _Untimely Meditations_


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