. . . government practically has outsourced the oversight and definition of technology-based expression and community interaction to for-profit corporations and secretive industry-specific cartels (e.g., the MPAA, RIAA, SIA, BSA, ICANN) who have wasted no time in rewriting the rules for how they want our information-based society to operate according to their interests, not ours. At times, you might even say we've voluntarily imprisoned ourselves under the control of profit-seeking wardens who have little if any real oversight or accountability for their actions. Our high-tech heroin dealers are not only promoting and profiting from their product but developing the laws and methods to govern and regulate its use while protecting themselves from any negative side-effects and ensuring their revenue stream.
In theory, cartels are unsustainable. In practice, collusion, owning the regulators and coercing subsidies ensures their continiuty until the whole economy is wrecked.
Via Wood's Lot
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