However, 2010 has been a year filled with success and failure.
Success
- WikiLeaks has started releasing 250,000 secret diplomatic cables which sparked a world-wide debate that was not only about our government, but also about net neutrality and freedom of information. Even many lawmakers are questioning the over-classification of documents.
- It is been decided in a court that hardware owners are allowed to use their hardware how they want (homebrew, jailbreaking, etc...).
- Facebook has finally done something about privacy options (although still not enough, it is a start).
- I have completed an HTML5 game which is advancing the use of open technologies on the Internet
- We have seen the foundation of the Dot-p2p project which hopes to provide a decentralized DNS system.
Failures
- Governments all over the world are losing sight of what free-speech is and switching to censored Internet models like those contained in China. Projects like Freenet might be our only hope. Although the United States hasn't gone this far yet, the the government has decided that it doesn't need permission to take down domain names.
- Hosting providers, credit card companies, and DNS providers alike have caved in to political pressure from the United States government had have cut services from WikiLeaks. Although it isn't illegal to ask private corporations to infringe upon your free-speech rights, this shows how the world will be going in the future with what is essentially legalized censorship.
I would just like to remind everyone that even on new years night/day, I do not rest, I keep fighting communistic control of speech (hence this blog post). Although I can't expect you to be this extreme, I sure hope you will send your congressmen an email asking them to support net neutrality and free-speech in this upcoming congressional term. Without speech, we are nothing, and I am not about to let that happen.
Happy New Year everyone!
