If you’ve spent any time thinking about how we “own” our books, movies, or music these days, you’ve probably noticed how messy it’s gotten. Back when everything was physical, ownership was simple: you bought a book, it was yours; you bought a DVD, you could watch it whenever you wanted. But with digital media, things aren’t so straightforward. Licenses, DRM, and restrictive contracts have complicated what it even means to “own” something.

I've been hearing a lot lately about how "the UK is killing the internet!" and "privacy is dead!" and so on and so forth. What's disappointing and somewhat confuses me about these exclamations is that, while I still very much disagree with these new policies, a majority of people have begun to see the internet as just a few sites, so if one gets worse or goes down, they think of it as a giant portion of the internet has been wiped out. I've begun labeling this type of traffic belonging to the blissfully ignorant as the intranet.

If you're in any way a part of the computer science community, there's no doubt in my mind that you've heard of or even support and use free software. If you already know what I'm talking talking about, feel free to skip ahead. For those of you who don't, I'm not talking about the price of the software you're using, though no price does tend to occur, but rather but your ability to use your programs any way you like without restriction.