The SA chapter of the Internet Society hosted a talk by Lawrence Lessig (wikipedia link). As the person who invented Creative Commons, Lessig is definitely an interesting speaker, and an interesting mix to Stallman and Co. The talk was more evangelising than anything else - I have come across most of the ideas before, both for my PhD work and other areas. Looking at the network stack, Lessig wants to promote the freeing up of the other stacks (TCP/IP is already free) to cater for commons, non profit usage.
His proposals have merit - the market space of the operating system and network providers, is often dominated by monopolies; and the monopolies have a direct say in what is available and supported by the operating systems and networks.
It is evident in UCT itself for example - ICTS as the sole provider of network access at UCT has the authority to decide what type of traffic is acceptable and not acceptable. It can dictate that certain applications should not be used; and thus block it. It can decide to throttle speeds etc etc. The argument is, that this type of operation, while probably fine for a company or even a community is not suitable for a country and even the world at large.
The problem is changing the mindset - after all; most IT guys don't want to talk the law. And most lawyers and legislators don't talk code. Maybe if we all did, it would be much better?
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