I am excitedly planning to read Jonathan Zittrain’s new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. It’s out in a free Creative Commons licensed version, linked above, as well as one you can buy through places like Amazon.
If you don’t recognize Jonathan’s name, you haven’t been following Internet legal issues for very long. Here’s a link to his Wikipedia entry if you want to catch up on all he’s done in this area.
I will report back once I’ve had an opportunity to read and digest the thoughts in the new book.
An interesting take on the Internet — I especially liked his suggestion for maintaining PCs without losing the ability to experiment:
“In an effort to satisfy the desire for safety without full lockdown…we could divide a PC into two virtual machines: “Red” and “Green.”
I disagree with his thoughts on Wikipedia, tho, I think the rate of vandalism is too high. His analogy to the highway that is safer because there are no laws ignores the fact that choosing to drive carelessly is a life or death decision and choosing to post misinformation on Wikipedia is not.