Funny (Blame Guttenberg)

Ten years ago, when Microsoft was still new to the Russian market, in a Russian web site I saw under the heading “Funny” a photo of a huge, multicolored Microsoft billboard advertising their newest Windows in Russian, attached neatly on an electric pole.  As grandeur as the slogan prizing the product was the intellectual property anti-theft warning: “Stealing a purse or stealing software - two crimes punishable by law”. Bellow the billboard, glued on the pole, printed on a simple A4 with the biggest font possible to fit on the paper, was a serial number for the Windows advertised above. About five years ago the American government prosecuted some kids for downloading and sharing music files. Today the digital piracy is still vital as always and the US government incentives like S.O.P.A. are in the vicinity.        

The technological progress makes it possible for the instantaneous creativity and innovation simply because of the instantaneous nature of the Internet. The information itself (copyrighted or not) is the biggest asset available to men today. The exchange of information on the Internet is becoming the main source of income for large industry hippopotamuses like RIAA and Google and for small Mom-and-Pop proprietorships alike so, naturally, it is going to be the main battlefield for resource distribution and re-distribution.

The Stop Online Piracy Act full title is "To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes." per Wikipedia. The major accent here is to “combating the theft of U.S. property”. This seams to be all about. The property of the United States of America is endangered.

The sad misconception at the top of the food chain is that information is like the oil, the gold or the corn. Whoever controls it – controls the physical world. Blame Guttenberg for inventing the printing press or blame Leonard Kleinrock's, J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor for their original idea of the network. The genie is out for good or for evil. The information (or the knowledge) is like the water in the toilet – once you flush it - is gone. But gone for you, not for the plumbing of your house, nor for the municipal plumbing or the fish in the lake where it ultimately ends up.

Innovative people (usually somewhere in Japan) collect such water, recycle it and reuse it. The waste is recycled too and turned into a fuel and used to power cities… Other places (usually in the US) start thinking about the waste in the drinking water when the taste is really unpleasant.

It is all about perspective. Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian educator, philosopher and scholar who is known for coining the expressions “the global village” and “the medium is the message”. He predicted the WWW almost thirty years before it was invented. The Internet is the medium and it is the message too.

Knowledge is from the Gods. Prometheus stole the fire from Zeus. Zeus then punished him for his crime by having him bound to a rock while a great eagle ate his liver every day only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day. 

I think that no one could possibly contain the message when it is out in the open not even the US Congress.