How Many Insane Laws Can One Country Have, Before it...

This from Wired News: "Imagine doing a Google search for a phone number, weather report or sports score. The results page would be filled with links to various sources of information. But what if someone typed in keywords and no results came back? That's the scenario critics are painting of a new bill wending its way through Congress that would let certain companies own facts, and exact a fee to access them."

And I'm sure it's called the "Free Flow Of Information" act or some-such nonsense. Somewhere I think there's a game being played to see if it's possible to transfer all liberties from the many to the few in 10 laws or less. With the 'Patriot Act' and the 'Digital Millennium Copyright Act' plus recent rulings against DVD-XCopy and many others, it appears they'll hit their mark - in about 4.5 years. Coincidence?

In that rosy future everything your read, write, listen to, and see will require both a 'reasonable fee' and a permission slip from your local IAB ('Information Access Board').

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, nor am I generally against corporations large or small. I believe this is all worse than a conspiracy, it's a complete systemic malfunction. The so-called 'special interests' are so deeply ingrained in the process at every level and the players are so filtered by them (you can't move up the ladder without their help) and then controlled by them (you can't stay up the ladder without their help) and they're so much better at manipulating the press and PR machines than the L's are (Lefties, Liberals, Libertarians and Laymen) that complete lunacy passes and responsible public policy. One by one these laws and rulings are disgusting. All together, they're catastrophic.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at March 9, 2004 08:46 AM