[ba-ohs-talk] Fwd: [PORT-L] The right to read
>From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>
>
>Following is a frightening article that was published in the
>Communications of the ACM in 1997:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
>
>What is most frightening is the postscript added in 2002, which points
>out that the necessary laws and technology have now been developed
>to enforce the scenario presented in that article. Even worse,
>universitites are not defending students who bypass that technology.
>Instead, some of them have already begun to punish them.
>
>Ironically, the technology (hardware and software) is called "trusted
>computing", and it is being sold to the public as if it gave them some
>benefit -- when in fact, it takes away their rights under the "fair use"
>provisions of the traditional copyright laws.
>
>What is even more frightening is that publishers and their minions
>(the politicians) are already talking about free libraries as a
>"problem" that has to be solved.
>
>WHen 1984 came and went without Orwell's predictions coming to pass,
>everyone breathed a sigh of relief. THat was premature -- it didn't
>come to pass for one simple reason: with the technology available in
>1984, it would have been too expensive to enforce that level of spying.
>Now that the technology is available, the Senator from Disney and his
>accomplices are rushing to implement what their masters are paying them
>to do.
>
>John Sowa (01)
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