It's the establishment vs the Web

Dear Sir/Madam, Here is interesting piece of writing appeared in The Hindu editorial of 8th December 2010 on Wikileaks. It raises some of the important questions of Internet freedom. Excerpt of the article ‘Never waste a good crisis” used to be the catchphrase of the Obama team in the run-up to the presidential election. In that spirit, let us see what we can learn from official reactions to the WikiLeaks revelations. The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing. And as the backlash unfolds — first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly “discovering” that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the U.S. government attempting to intimidate Columbia students posting updates about WikiLeaks on Facebook — the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured. The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net. Read the full text here: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article937990.ece ------------------------- With best wishes Vasantha Raju N Govt. First Grade College-Periyapatna Mysore ------------------------- -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.
participants (1)
-
Vasanth