Mitch Ratcliffe: What is the Net, marketplace, commons or temporary autonomous zone?
Anyone who cites Oliver Wendell Holmes, is fine by me… and to invoke taxation, no less: you know, taxes being the price we pay for a free society and all that.
Mr. Ratcliffe is proposing that, instead of regulating the internet “commons”, we should actively set out to broaden that idea… oh, but he says it better anyway:
The Net is a means to increased freedom and free communication of ideas and opinion is an end in itself. Without the wider context of the question of an American dream of a better world for our children and an international dream of a better world for everyone’s children, free of hunger, ignorance and dogmatism, among a whole slew of human suffering that we might inflict on one another, the Net is just a distraction from the serious issues of policy that are reshaping the world as one where competition exists without cooperation.