Remember when the internet was going to be this amazing thing ?
These days it seems to be a machine for making me think "FFS" an increasing amount of times a day.
These days it seems to be a machine for making me think "FFS" an increasing amount of times a day.
Not really. If "uncorrupted versions of these cultural artifacts" are illegal, what the internet does is make it easy to track down the people sharing them for punishment.
The internet is far more amenable to automated surveillance at scale than the offline world.
But you know what? There was a lot more stuff being shared on the internet in 01998 than in 01994, despite sounds.sdsu.edu getting shut down. There was a lot more in 02002 than in 01998, despite Usenet having mostly died. There was a lot more in 02006 than in 02002, despite the Napster suit. And that trend doesn't seem to be slowing down even today, despite the automated surveillance at scale.