It is encouraging to see how widespread and univocal the protests against the so-called "anti-piracy agreements" are. It is uplifting to see how everyone seems to realize that the creative power, the spontaneous beauty and the unparalleled efficiency of the Internet consists precisely in the fact that it approximates a pure free market community more than anything else. We all know this, we have all experienced this, and that is why we realize what it would mean to lose it.
Perhaps most importantly, we realize not only that we do not need any "Internet police" or any "Internet regulatory office", but also that any attempts to expand the competences of the would-be organizations of this sort are immediately going to be countered by the spontaneous efforts of cyber vigilantes (the so-called "hackers"), thereby creating a huge positive externality for the global community of Internet users (with nobody calling for its "internalization").
The hopeful bottom line of all this is the following - if the Internet continues to exist in its present, largely libertarian form for the foreseeable future, while playing an ever more prominent role in our everyday lives, then at some point it might dawn on its users at large that when it comes to the preconditions for their smooth, effective and socially beneficial operation, there are no essential differences between the virtual reality and the "real" reality. And then the nov-violent protests we are witnessing nowadays might successfully spread into more tangible realms.
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