Liberty, Technology, Duty: Where Peace Overlaps War is well worth a read.
…Disagreements about the nature of government, culture and freedom тАФ once matters of abstract theory тАФ have recently become all too urgent. What sort of government is ideal? What are the connections between a culture and its ideas of freedom? And how is freedom to be balanced with the rule of law? The fates of nations at war rest on such questions.
To gain some perspective it may help to turn away from the international arena and look instead at matters ordinarily left for specialists: issues involving copyright law, intellectual property and open-source computer software, issues that seem far removed from Falluja. Yet now in courtrooms, in scholarly books and in popular tracts it can seem as if similar things are being debated.
For what is at stake in this more placid arena other than questions of ownership and concepts of liberty and obligation? And aren’t the stakes high here as well, particularly as technological innovations make possible a universe in which everything can be copied and anything goes as well as a universe in which everything is controlled and nothing is permitted?
To many critics of copyright, the parallels are clear. Discussions of students being prosecuted for downloading MP3 files or of communally revised software being made freely available can lead to comparisons with antiglobalization protests or to advocacy of multilateralism in a new world order. Copyright law, technology and political culture seem to raise related issues…
If we speak of Freedom and Liberty in the context of Iraq, what is so different when we speak of our own countries? To do otherwise seems less than sane.
© 2008 eAsylum.