One of the principles this country was founded on in the 1700's was the right of free speech and of a free press, which was essentially the same thing at the time. The population was small, so anyone could get their message to virtually the entire country with a reasonable effort.

By the 1800's, however, a growing population and the economics of mass communication prompted someone to point out quite correctly that freedom of the press belonged to those who could afford to own one.

The invention and popularization of radio in the early 1900's put true freedom of speech and of the press back in the hands of anyone willing to make a modest investment of time and money in the hobby of amateur radio. For just a few, short years it was possible for almost anyone to speak or respond directly and immediately to everyone willing to listen.

Unfortunately, the gossiping of amateur radio operators was alleged to interfere with attempts to mount rescue operations during the sinking of the Titanic. Almost immediately thereafter governments all over the world stepped up to claim the vast bulk of the radio frequency spectrum as their own. The only useful part remaining was given to large commercial interests. Two way communication between amateurs was quickly and quietly relegated to a few obscure corners of the frequency spectrum where they could be tightly controlled by numerous regulations and licensing requirements which would insure that they would never be noticed by the public again.

Now the Internet is being hailed by everyone from adolescent hackers to Supreme Court Justices as the greatest democratic forum for free speech the world has ever seen. Everybody from the President to the kid next door has a web page, but that might not last long. Already the big communications and entertainment conglomerates are clamoring for new, tougher copyright laws with no provisions at all for Fair Use. Disney, Time-Warner, MS-NBC, et. al. would love to clear the great unwashed rabble off the Net, tame it and reduce it to just another million channels of commercial television under their government sanctioned control, just as soon as they can turn all us unlicensed, unregulated participants into passive, paying consumers. Talk about decorating a cake for your child's birthday party with mouse ears and Disney's lawyers will be all over you with cease and desist orders. Put up an X-Files fan site, and you'll soon learn that Fox Broadcasting owns the copyright on the letter "X"! And God help you if you dare illustrate your tastes in pin-ups with a scan from Playboy.

Now I have no objection to anyone trying to make a buck off the Internet. That concept is as American as apple pie. But before the Internet is totally taken over by big business enterprises and the view from the Information Superhighway is completely blocked by billboards, I'd like to point out that, like the medium of radio, us amateurs were here first. This vast new sales territory that commercial interests are expanding into so rapidly was created by us geeks and hackers by sharing and linking together whatever we could without asking anyone's permission. Before AOL, before Prodigy or CompuServe, on our own time and at our own expense, us unlicensed, unregulated amateurs created the operating system, Unix, the language, HyperText Markup Language, the World Wide Web, and the first browsers, not to mention email protocols and Usenet newsgroups, all of which were public domain from the beginning and thrived and grew precisely because they could be freely shared.

I'm not advocating the theft of anybody's creative work, but surely Cyberspace has room for both the Speilbergs and their fans. If not, the rights of free speech and free press will be lost to the masses of ordinary people again and back in the hands of the wealthy, powerful elite, who have controlled them for far too long already.