I’m not really a huge Cory Doctorow fanboy, but he does tend to say things well. Here, he talks a lot less about copyright/copyleft (though still some) and a lot more about how society is going to deal with and or not deal with general purpose computation as it (even more than now) becomes part of everything.
Really, he just makes two points:
- General purpose computation and general purpose networking are going to be everywhere and there will be huge (seemingly reasonable) demand to restrict it.
- All ways to restrict it converge spyware and rootkits to restrict general purpose computation and surveillance and censorship to restrict general purpose networking.
That being said, what he doesn’t do, and what I wish he would do, is articulate an argument for why somebody who would today want to do SOPA-like things (and there are lots of such people) should think twice about doing it in a SOPA-style way.
Still, it’s worth watching because it’s an entertaining and clean explanation of those two points.
