tbtf points out that it's been
about three and a half years since
anon.penet.fi shut down.
I find it interesting to go over these old stories, not
only to see how the issues they're being raised are being
dealt with today
(hushmail or
freedom.net, anyone?)
but also to see just how many bad links show up. None of the
links at the
original tbtf story work (except for the one that
seems to be a porn site now). Because so few news sources
have robust archives, the utility of linking quickly decays.
While some
might point to the deficiencies of http/html/URIs as the
cause of this, the blame lies more at the feet of content
providers who have a vision of the web where they control
how, when and for how long we get to view content. My
local
papers think
that this period is a day. The
Globe and Mail and
NY Times think a week
is long enough to provide free links.
The National Post is generous with 6 months of freebies. After
that, you better get ready to cough up ridiculous amounts per
article, if archives are available at all. I could go on about this,
but suck already
said it better than I could, and did it two years ago to boot.
Now imagine this ridiculous situation applied to all the
media you consume - movies, music, books - and I think it
sums up the corporate "vision" for the net: consumers
will never again have outright ownership of any copyrighted
work, we will merely rent it. This is why I think merely
technical solutions are not enough - there need to be sane
copyright and patent laws that continue to do what they
were intended to do - balance the interests of copyright holders
and the public good. You'll know that this has happened when
Mickey Mouse actually enters the public domain.