Cory Doctorow: copyright wars are just the first salvo in a fundamental fight

An important lesson from Cory Doctorow on what the coming war on general purpose computation. The attempts by industry to censor the internet and control our computing devices are just the first salvo in a century-long conflict.

The stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

I particularly like his upbeat ending:

“We’ve spent the last ten years sending our best players out to fight what we thought was the final boss at the end of the game, but it turns out it’s just been the mini-boss at the end of the level… but like all good level designers, fate has sent us a soft target to train ourselves on.”