grouching, slouching

The "Wikileaks" thing -- with the cables / communications from countries around world being "leaked" -- read that there's a sort of group of people -- very loosely related -- mostly guys between 19 and 23 years of age, giving MasterCard and others grief.

Sounds like their concern is
freedom of speech on internet
being constricted by governments and big business

One quoted on the Lede Blog (or nytimes) said, like, "This is Lexington." Like it's fight for freedom.
We live in interesting times.

This week's New York Times Review of Books contains story on
The Master Switch by Tim Wu.
[excerpt from the review]: -------------------
The organizing principle [of the book] ... is what Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, calls "the cycle." "History shows a typical progression of information technologies," he writes, "from somebody's hobby to somebody's industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel -- from open to closed system." Eventually, entrepreneurs or regulators smash apart the closed system, and the cycle begins anew.

The story covers the history of phones, radio, television, movies and, finally, the Internet. All of these businesses are susceptible to the cycle because all depend on networks, whether they're composed of cables in the ground or movie theaters around the country. Once a company starts building such a network or gaining control over one, it begins slouching toward monopoly. If the government is not already deeply involved in the business by then (and it usually is), it soon will be.
------------------------- [end quote]

Would this explanation ( / analysis) make the wikileaks folks and the tormentors of mastercard and other giants feel any better? Would it give them a useful perspective? Would they be OK with it? Should we be?

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