Abstract :
Explores the need to protect the content and information gleamed from the Internet while, at the same time, ensure that freedom of access and quality of content remains intact. Claims that there is a choice - do we want to make protection of individual Internet elements the owners??? problem for all values of ???owner,??? subject to unpredictable differentiation and a picking of winners and losers by emergent processes that we can perhaps still influence but never again control? Or do we want near monocultures of a few winning platforms whose vastness represents empire and thus requires a level of defense that only a nationstate can provide, if at all? On the former lies the path of so much science fiction, especially if the Singularity is imminent. On the latter lies the path to a state-level control far more invasive than fiat currency and secret standing armies. If neither of these options appeals, now is the time to apply the brakes. Now is the time, individually and collectively, to tamp down risk by tamping down dependence on the Internet. Now is the time to say that target richness is a disease for which the cure is intolerable.
