There’s an old expression that was probably born in the early days of America, that goes “If you want a Free Press, then you need to own one.” Today, freedom of the press is mostly consigned to us bloggers, as all the other media is constrained by their own politics and the political powers that currently reside and you don’t see much honest reporting with any of them. The things that the American public has the greatest need to know are often the same things that no one will mention except bloggers.
It is the Internet that’s given us back some measure of Freedom of the Press, and it’s the Internet that has allowed people everywhere to openly share any content of their computers that they choose. The result of this has been the sharing of copyrighted material, governmental secrets, images abusive of children and others, terrorist manuals and other things rightfully illegal along with everyday material.
However, the Internet can’t be blamed, and it has been. Before the Internet, all those illegal things were being traded by other means. The Internet only provided a new and easier way. Yet our and other governments are using this trade as an excuse to take control of the Internet, or attempt to, once again attacking our access to a Free Press.
So I’m damn near exhilarated to inform you that a new file-sharing program has come into being that cannot be stopped, shut down by the government, seized by the government, or sued into oblivion. It’s called Tribler and you can read about it here.
“… it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. “The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,” the lead researcher says.”
Since most governments are so very heavily dependent on the Internet for their day-to-day operations, the chance of the Internet being taken down is zero.
Those who use the Internet for illegal purposes deserve appropriate punishment. When it comes to sharing music files, however, I do take a different view from those who made the music. It never used to be that musicians became millionaires from a single record or two, but now we have 17-year-olds making more money for singing a half dozen songs than a qualified, college graduate engineer makes in a lifetime, and that’s so out of balance with reality that it boggles. So if their income is reduced by file sharing, then I guess they’ll just have to be happy with all the $50,000, 2-hour concert appearances. After all, their fame is primarily the result of the Internet. If we gave them their fame, what do WE get paid for making them rich? A few free songs isn’t too high a price at all.
Tribler can be downloaded directly from the source, right here.