How to tame the Internet Back in the day, by insisting that information wants to be free, hackers sat out of meetings between lawyers, the publishing industry, and government bodies. As a result monstrosities like the Hague protocol and DMCA came into being. I think that this is less true now, certainly after Dmitry, Felton, etc. The challenge for hackers is how to ally with regular folk, who are still not part of meetings where there freedoms are restricted.

They may find some unlikely allies in the financial industry, where companies are incensed that others are keeping their public pronouncements, well, public. The narrow mental outlook of the legal set who support the idea that a public conference call is somehow the "property" of the company that organized it should raise the issue of what exactly "ownership" should mean when applied to information.