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A great anomaly: the non-passive Internet: the campaign to quash freedom on the net is moving into top gear.

Article Excerpt
Each of the following stories is true, fairly recent and a bit scary. See what you make of them.

1. Electronic voting machines are expected to loom large in the coming US elections. How easy are they to rig? Last year, students at Swarthmore College published on the Internet some candid and revealing emails circulating inside Diebold Election Systems, the largest US manufacturer. Accusing the students of copyright infringement, Diebold demanded that the material be removed from the students' web page. Swarthmore College duly removed it.

2. Russian Dimitry Sklyarov wrote a program to crack Adobe's eBook encipherment, allowing users to move eBooks from one machine to another, and enabling blind consumers to hear the books read out loud. The code Sklyarov wrote was legal where it was written, but when it was sold by his company in the United States it became illegal. When he came to the United States in July 2001 to talk about that code, the FBI arrested him and Sklyarov faced charges carrying a maximum sentence of twenty-five years. Later reverberations included his employer firm withdrawing--on legal advice--from an Amsterdam conference at which it was to discuss 'the flaws in digital rights-management software'.

3. One day after Brianna LaHara was sued by music executives for trading songs over the Internet, her mother agreed to fork out over $2000 rather than go to court. Brianna also issued an apology, on Recording Industry Association of America (IAA) stationery, as detailed in the New York Daily News. While Brianna's mother may be breathing easier--the RIAA had sought up to $150,000 for each of the 1000 songs Brianna traded--thirty other New Yorkers named in the suits are sweating it out. Brianna, an upper West Side Catholic schoolgirl, is just twelve years old.

4. When you download a text from an Internet site, it is the person...

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