There are two alternative futures for us with the internet technology and what it leads on to.

Thee's the one where all the wealth of ideas and music and culture of the whole world is wide open for us all to use it, and be rich in those kind of things beyond our dreams, wherever we live.

And there's the one where everything is sewn up tight and there's a price on everything we do, and systems for making us pay it - each time we read anything or listen to anything the recording gremlin notes it down and taps it into our account.

And then the information gathered is used to sell us stuff, and to control how we live in all kinds of minute ways masquerading as free. And in the long run, there won't be any public domain at all, and anybody even talking in those kinds of terms will be liable to be investigated as subversive.

We are either living in the dawn of freedom, or in its twilight days. And I'm starting to think it's not going to be the dawn unless people start doing something effective about stopping this kind of thing.