Times change, technology changes, businesses must adapt to these realities or die. We can not legislate away reality, no matter how hard we might try.

Digital media combined with inexpensive storage and transfer technology create a radical change in the way that information is distributed. Where distribution and duplication used to be expensive and difficult, they are now so inexpensive as to be nearly free. Companies whose business models rely on the difficulty of copying and distributing information are going to suffer if they do not change how they do business. It does not matter how many artificial barriers we create to hinder the flow of digital information, it will flow. The best thing that we can do is try to understand the nature of the changes that are occuring and help these companies adapt.

The radical changes in the cost structure of media development and distribution create opportunities for entrepeneurs and the potential for the generation of incredible wealth. Consider Open Source Software, (see http://www.opensource.org/) powerful empowering technology is being created by people who freely share their work, this is only possible because of the new cost structure. IBM is willing to back this model with $1 billion. They expect to make money by providing services to software users. Under this approach we generate stand to generate incredible gains, as IBM improves an Open Source software program, *everyone* who uses it benefits. If Hewlet Packard uses the same software, and further improves the software, IBM and HP and everyone benefits.

The world of software has begun to adapt to the new realities of the digital revolution. It is not surprising that those who made the revolution adapt to it first. More traditional media have not yet found a model that works. They will, and when they do, it will be radically different from how we do things now. It will be an approach that accomodates and accepts the human desire to share. It will enrich us all.

If we pretend that these changes are not occuring, if we fail to recognize their inevitability, if we create and enforce draconion laws that cost us our liberties, we will lose an unprecedented opportunity to enrich our country and the entire world. We will lose our economic power, we will lose our political power, and we will have lost our basic freedoms.

TGI says moo