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I think that the critical thing about the\nInternet--and this comes out of Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes\nEverybody--is,\nit makes it possible for people to create institutions and organizations with\nless planning, forethought, and resources than ever before. You can get\ntogether with friends and do stuff really much more easily than ever before.\nWhich means to a certain extent that we don't need the government to back off\non data mining, and we don't need the record industry to back off on its\ndistribution model. All we need is the space in which to easily form groups\nthat subvert both those things. In other words, the space to form groups that\nmake available and distribute cryptographic tools that make data mining\nirrelevant. The space to build alternative distribution models that make the\nrecord industry irrelevant. Here I am with this Creative Commons-licensed book\nthat was released for free when it was released in stores, but that book's gone\ninto its fourth week on the top of the New York Times [children's] bestseller\nlist. It seems to me that provided that we can fight them to a standstill, and\nkeep the Internet open and free so people who are doing things that make them\nobsolete can find the space to do so, we can win to a larger extent. With\ngovernment, I think it's a little different, because I do believe we need to\nelect leaders that represent us. I don't think it's enough to just subvert what\ngovernments are trying to do--you also have to have leaders who respect\nyour freedom. But if we can subvert the data mining long enough, we can use\nthat to organize groups of people who will keep an eye on, or ouster, or hold to\naccount, politicians who don't do the right thing.