The American Freedom Network

Big Brother: Coming to the Noosphere?

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=383

The folks at the Free Software Foundation are worried. “ACTA” is some little-known agreement that will regulate counterfeiting.  Does this extend to free software?  Will the software monopolists try and pull a fast one on us, and regulate open-source/free software, as many think the media monopolists will use the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine’ to put down talk radio?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/25/google-drive-gdrive-internet

It’s not just the government aiming to control our computers; Google, as noted in the story above, wants to induce us to put all of our information on their servers, rather than on our own hard drives.  Convenient, since you can access the information from anywhere with internet access; but it’s not your information anymore: it’s theirs, unless the government wants it.  (Now, they only have to go to one place, instead of gaining access to everyone’s data….) 
Remember POP mail?  You had your personal mail on your computer; now, with Gmail, it’s somewhere else.  We post to Facebook, instead of e-mailing photos and messages, and so forth.  The trend is toward the Googlization of information and communications, and away from ownership of what ought to be unquestionably ours.  If you value freedom over convenience, then perhaps some second thoughs are in order, before you surrender your digital life to the cloud computers.