Thoughts on the Power of the Internet

The great daily newspapers survived the onslaughts of all the competing media of the 20th century: movies, radio, TV. But the great dailies seem to be slowly expiring in the face of the Internet. They have tried to adapt but so far with little financial success.



I find several things extremely exciting and promising about all this:

First,never before in the history of free speech have all us common folk had such access to rest of humanity. If you can read and write and gain access to a computer, you can do exactly what I am doing now. Your words --- and mine --- may be no more than drops in a vast ocean. But we have a chance to be heard. The stories of bloggers who went on to fame, fortune and influence are many and growing.


Second, as the world's population continues to balloon, we might reasonably ask if it's still possible to have viable democracies. The Internet may be one, perhaps the main, answer to that question.




As you can see, there is a hot debate raging on this issue. I for one am hopeful.

Wikileaks has brought to a crisis stage the question of just what are the limits of freedom of expression on the world=wide web. Today it was announced that four hackers have been arrested in England, charged with responsibility for the cyber attacks on Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, which were launched in retaliation for those companies dropping Wikileaks.



The Wikileaks case will be fought out on many fronts: the charges of sexual assault pending against Assange in Sweden;



the inevitable court martial of the Army private who leaked all those docuemnts to Assange;
U.s. Military Justice Handbook - Uniform Code of Military Justice, Title 10, U.s.c. Chapter 47
and I think ultimately a federal trial for Assange in the US, if the feds can get their hands on them via extradition.
Extradition to and from the United States 2010


Meanwhile, the unrest in Egypt has led the Egyptian government to take steps which are in effect a tribute tot he power of the Internet: it has shut down both Internet and cell phone service in that troubled nation in an effort to curb the protesters' effectiveness.

The Chinese have been trying to control the internet for years.

But they seemt o have loosened up recently, as my recent posting on the Chinese equivalent of Wikileaks suggests. That site is http://www.703804.com.