Free! Free! Free?

FREE! It's just about everyone's favorite number because what's not to love about something that comes at the price of nothing? Need I mention a certain episode of Oprah in which she gave away cars, iPods and a cruise to her audience for supposedly no cost to them? However, when dealing with the Internet, free isn't a word that is embraced.

Doctorow presents us with a very articulate response to the Internet and its relationship to this new phase general-purpose computers are experiencing. With the dawn of the new millennium, issues like copyright and file-to-file downloading become very important topics of discussion for companies and individuals that utilize the Internet as a means of releasing data. It raises the question of who has the right to control what an end user downloads onto their general-computing devices. Does anyone have a right to control what an end user chooses to do?

SOPA instantly comes to mind as a recent example of the struggle between the creator of data and the end user. Nonetheless, Doctorow states that, "this isn't about copyright. The copyright wars are just the beta version of a long coming war on computation. The entertainment industry is just the first belligerents to take up arms, and we tend to think of them as particularly successful. After all, here is SOPA, trembling on the verge of passage, ready to break the Internet on a fundamental level— all in the name of preserving Top 40 music, reality TV shows, and Ashton Kutcher movies." I like this statement because it shows that something much bigger than free content is at play here. This issue is not so much "free content for everyone" as much as it is about the right of the end user in the face of government censorship. 






I'd like to end this serious conversation on a lighter note with one of these lovable Rage Comics: