But they’re nothing if not crafty, and so we have this latest push in Canada to require bandwidth overage charges, levies on media players, and so on that will ultimately end up in the pockets of these same corporations. In exchange for these additional fees and restrictions, Canadians will get what, precisely? A few additional services (Hulu, Pandora) might become available for DRM-laden streaming, when as things stand now we can *download* what we want to watch or listen to without any pain in the ass encryption to hassle with, and continue on sharing what we get with others. We already receive a superior product for a superior price, and though these pathetic attempts to claw back the hands of time might eventually succeed—corporations and politics being what they are—Canadians should continue to fight as strenuously as possible.

None of this is to say I’m opposed to purchasing the digital content I consume (quite the opposite!) but I DO require that that content be DRM-free and preferably have other advantages with respect to what I can get now. In other words, it has to be a *competitive* offering. If there’s anything we know about the plutocrats and corporatists that currently run the show, it’s that they love the idea of Free Markets except when that ideology forces them to innovate or compete. It’s like they blinked for 15 years while the Internet rose to prominence and are now shocked—shocked, I say—that their old business models no longer serve to extract maximum profits for minimal effort. Bureaucratic inertia can only serve as an excuse for that laziness for so long….

Also, I love the suggestions above about p2p hardware; that’s a great idea, and there are lots of folks working on creating protocols for robust ad-hoc wireless networks with onion routing and other goodness. Cf.

http://battlemesh.org/
http://www.locustworld.com/

and others. The revolution will not be televised….

/rant

ummm how does it not. EVERYTHNIG that goes over the internet(outside your house/condo/apartment/hut/igloo) will count. ya p2p on your own lan will not.

ummm how does it not. EVERYTHNIG that goes over the internet(outside your house/condo/apartment/hut/igloo) will count. ya p2p on your own lan will not.