It IS a wonderful world and many are working to make it better.

I have embraced the EFF (Electronic Freedom Foundation) and am happy to see them move into hard-ball politics to protect the "Folk Family" from those who would confine our community.

Excerpts - Financial Times of London
July 07, 2009

Copyright Laws Threaten Our Online Freedom

By Christian Engström
(the Pirate party's member of the European parliament)

What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not "ours" at all.

On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are
replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.

This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it.

Despite the crackdown on Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade,
the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially.

Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material.
If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private.

In the former East Germany, the government needed tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the
citizens using typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same thing a
million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many politicians who want to push that button.

But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them.

Our manifesto is:
~ to reform copyright laws
~ abolish the patent system
~ oppose mass surveillance
~ oppose censorship
~ make the EU more democratic and transparent.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

I like these people - perhaps they will replace a few narrow bridges.

Did you know that in the state of Maine (USA) everyone who has received ANY state funds has a record on the web? Excellent transparancy in government ! ! !