&gt; The one, unqualifiedly great thing the Internet has done is provide access to information. Movies, books, news, technical papers–all of that. Today, I can find out information which I would have needed to visit a library to find out in 1990. Often, I can find out information I would have need a university library to find.<p>This deserves more than a throwaway paragraph! Forget libraries. In an hour of Internet searching, I can get information that would have required weeks of work in 1990. Visiting libraries. Calling people, asking who might know something, tracking them down, talking them into helping me, etc, etc.<p>&gt; As one of its negative side effects, the Telecom revolution enables a panopticon surveillance state which is far more intrusive than what Orwell imagined in 1984 or which the Stasi created in East Germany.<p>True enough. But it&#x27;s not all that hard to obfuscate identity.<p>&gt; Information doesn’t “want to be free” and the rise of the Internet has seen a vast tightening of copyright and patent laws, rather than a utopia of free information you are actually allowed to use.<p>Unjust laws are commonly ignored.