A few moments later, we sat there listening to "Sugar Magnolia" by The Grateful Dead. The guitar came in, then the lyrics, and as words passed over us - "Sometimes when the night is dying, I take me out and wander round" - I never thought of what we were doing as stealing. It was instantaneous appreciation: the chance to share an experience without discs or hard copies or having to walk to a store. Though I would lose him, that file, and that building a short time later, the memory stayed with me. When I was thirteen, I bought the album "American Beauty" and played it over and over again on my Walkman as I lay in bed at night, trying in vain to recapture that lost, shared moment. It was resplendent, and no one can tell me it was wrong.
I have only a few strong political beliefs. Chief among these is my personal dedication to the dream of a free-information society. I'm a digital native - it's in my upbringing. Before I ever had independent buying power, I had been taught to pirate. Any media I have ever been able to buy, I have been able to steal just as easily. In my mind, the options are essentially interchangeable. While I do occasionally dwell upon the fact that I may be robbing an employee within the film or music industry of a needed paycheck, it seems to me that it's the business model that needs revision - not my methods. You can't fight the future, and no one wants to be on the wrong side of history.
Though sometimes I download a movie or an album from The Pirate Bay, these are the exceptions and not the rule. By and large I download books, most of them philosophy. When I finish reading the works of Ken Wilbur or Robert Anton Wilson, if I decide I like the content, I purchase the title in paperback to add to my bookshelf. Until that point, I see it as no different from checking a book out of the library. My ability to be exposed to these thinkers, to develop my own opinions and curate my thinking in the same way I curate my book collection, is a privilege. But access to such information shouldn't be.
I am no utopian, but I do believe that instead of being prohibited by the prices of tuition and textbooks, all students should be entitled to an open-source, open-access curriculum. I envision a world in which impoverished children can read The Odyssey on a computer, while listening to selections from Wagner - for free. I hope one day to live in a world where culture is not mediated by capitalist institutions. While copyright laws are extended seemingly indefinitely to keep Mickey Mouse in the hands of the Disney Corporation, I imagine a world in which we are all autodidacts - self-made and self-taught individuals, granted the access to the well of collective human experience and information that is our birthright.
Most days, my belief extends not just to our cultural heritage but to all information. In the landmark 1971 Supreme Court case The New York Times Co. vs United States, Justice Potter Stewart ruled in favor of the newspaper's decision to print the controversial Watergate papers, saying, "In the absence of governmental checks and balances, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power may be an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion..." Though his decision would seem to establish the free press as a public service, serving an essential function in democratic government by assuring that the electorate is informed of all the facts, his words have not stood the test of time. And though I would like to think that our betrayal by mainstream corporate media is recent - its descent into cheap entertainment and thrills - if I'm being honest, it began years ago. Take, for example, that during the first Gulf War, CNN ran footage from cameras mounted on the cones of missiles claiming it was live, despite it having been prescreened and edited for broadcast by the Pentagon. When the news service becomes a simulacrum of itself, serving the interest of powers that be over its stated goal to inform the public, drastic measures are necessary.
For the last few years, Wikileaks has been exactly that sort of drastic measure. First rising to prominence in 2010 with their video "Collateral Murder" - depicting a US helicopter killing two civilian journalists in Iraq - the open-source news organization has become a center of global attention and controversy. Despite being labeled a terrorist organization by even some high-ranking members of our government, the site's only crime has been releasing to the public the documents leaders and officials pass among themselves. When the reasons for our involvement in overseas wars that kill our fellow citizens, defame our nation's status in the international community, cause us to spend trillions of our tax dollars become murky, leaks like the so-called Iraq and Afghanistan War Diaries become necessary. When stations like CNN resign themselves to interviewing celebrities on Piers Morgan instead of reporting the news, something like Wikileaks becomes inevitable to balance the scales.
To date, Wikileaks itself has been directly responsible for no deaths, but I concede that its own internal ethics are questionable. Make no mistake, information can be dangerous. If the identities of undercover CIA operatives were leaked, they'd certainly be killed. The problem becomes, who decides what information we have access to, and who could possibly be trusted with that responsibility without ulterior motives? But information alone is not enough to kill people. You need an angry person with a gun.
And here's the gun.
In the past week, the previously fringe technology of 3D Printing has entered into the public eye and the mainstream media with the announcement of a completely self-manufactured firearm - the Liberator. The weapon itself looks more like a Nerf toy than a service revolver, its body a mix of blue and white plastic resin. For some this is a novelty straight from science fiction, not unlike the promise of a flying car. For me, it's the climax of a story I've been following for months, the saga of the Liberator's inventor, Cody Wilson - twenty-five-year-old self-described crypto-anarchist, and founder of the Austin-based company Defense Distributed.
Wilson is an enigma. Somewhat boyishly handsome, at face value he looks like he should be in a frat house or climbing the ranks of a law firm rather than being interviewed on national news. When he speaks about politics, his only clear stance is on the protection of the right to bear arms, though some of his more colorful comments - like his belief that Mitt Romney and President Obama are two faces for the ruling class of the banking elite - make me think he'd be best described as a Libertarian. Interviewed on Glenn Beck this fall, Wilson's response to a simple question - "Are you a hero or a villain?" - was as playful as it was worrisome: "That is the question, isn't it?"
According to national firearm regulations, only the lower receiver of a gun is technically a firearm. This is the central section of the weapon that holds the trigger and attaches to an ammunition magazine. It is also the only portion of a gun that bears a serial number, the http://www.storeboard.com/blogs/other/the-liberty-biogas-generator/640182
