The Internet: Killer Virus of the State (A brief essay by By Bill Frezza)

Bill’s piece on the Internet can be read here.

I actually found this article on Friday, but forgot to bookmark it. Fortunately, I re-found it via Reddit’s search.

Bill Frezza was a weekly columnist for InternetWeek (now known as InformationWeek). This short piece does not have a date to it, but from what little I was able to find on the net it may be from 1997.

Our civic fabric is unraveling. And as it does, uncontrolled, undigested and unmanaged information is spewing out. Free reign is being given to a wild cornucopia of ideas and opinions that would never have passed into broad circulation filtered through the conformity of the old media.

Watch carefully as the various organs of state waken to the threat and fire up their immune systems.

We’re already seeing what those “immune systems” are doing, or attempting; Lawsuits for “piracy,” corporate controlled newsrooms, telco immunity for conspiring to create a security-surveillance grid. But as Bill wrote, “each assault on freedom-of-the-Net will breed 10 technical work-arounds. Cybercrats can’t outfox cypherpunks.” Wishful thinking these days? Maybe, but it can inspire people to rally to take the Internet back and make it the Great Equalizer to corporate-government tyranny it once was… and can still be.

The Net will subvert the centralized economic and social control mechanisms that allowed the great welfare-warfare states of the 20th century to dominate our commerce, our psychic landscape and even our definition of who we are.

Just something to wrap your carbon/silicon - based brains around.