[LINK] the myth of government censorship

[Chirgwin, Richard]

>By the time we wake up and
>realise our freedoms have been eroded, it'll be too late to do anything
>about it.

Well, yes, Sam. 

There is no need for insanity to discover some - let's not call it
conspiracy, but rather collusion.

The usual means is as a trade: you can have "this" wonderful product, but
you'll give up just a little bit of freedom to have it. A good example is
the e-book; "because this is a piece of software, we can impose a license.
Don't lend it. Don't let anyone read it over your shoulder. And don't read
it out loud."

IMO, the cargo-cult approach to eroding freedoms can be considered
successful when the debate is moved to a new playing field. In the e-book
case, instead of agitating for literature to be kept under the heading
"copyright", we have people like Lessig saying "we've got a nicer license
than they have" (the open publishing license). Which means the "license to
read" people have won, because the erosion of freedom was in applying
licenses to books, not in applying the "wrong" licenses to books.

RC