:NY Times: The Concept of Copyright Fights for Internet Survival
NY Times: The Concept of Copyright Fights for Internet Survival May 11, 2000, 07 :32 UTC (1 Talkback[s]) (5232 reads) (Other stories by John Markoff) (As seen on lwn)
"While American courts struggle over the recording industry's challenge
to digital music swapping, Ian Clarke, a 23-year-old Irish
programmer, is moving on to the next battleground. He is finishing a
program that he says will make it impossible to control the traffic in any kind of
digital information -- whether it is music, video, text or software."
"His program, known as Freenet, is intended to make it possible to acquire or
exchange such material anonymously while frustrating any attempt to remove
the information from the Internet or determine its source...."
"Mr. Clarke said he was confident that corporations
trying to develop complex technologies to encrypt
information or otherwise halt the free sharing of
computer data would ultimately fail. "I have two
words for these companies: give up," he said.
"There is no way they are going to stop these
technologies. They are trying to plug holes in a
dam that is about to burst."
"That attitude, plus the fact that millions of users have come to rely on easy
access to digital information via the Internet, suggests that the issue may
quickly outstrip the current debate over copyright infringement between the
recording industry association and a variety of Internet music distributors."
