[Reader-list] Tools, Regulations and Space

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

This is in response to Jeebesh's and Rana's recent writing about tools and 
regulations. I think the interesting thing that Rana is pointing out is 
that the real issue that bothers power (corporate or state) is the 
formation of ungovernable communities itself and the proliferation of 
horizontal as opposed to vertical communities. That this is done in the 
name of content is another issue.

An interesting sidelight on this is that in a recent presentationon law and 
the city in CSDS, DElhi we came to know that sixty percent of Delhi's 
population is involved either in illegal occupation of space, or illegal 
pursuit of trades, or is consuming illegal products. The entire spectrum of 
daily life is enmehed in notions of illicit and illegal 
spaces/trades/communications. The state and coproate interests can police 
the interent in the way that they do, because the methodology of control 
that they deploy has already been tried and tested on the streets. This 
seems to suggest to me that those keen on ensuring that the net stays a 
free space need to give some attention to the erosion of everyday libverty 
in the offline world. Of course it goes without saying that those who work 
in the sphere of civil liberties 'offline' would run the risk of a certain 
'scotoma' an unwillingness to see what is in fornt of thewir eyes if they 
do not recognioze that the sophisticated methods of surveillance that are 
being developed in cyberspace will not also impinge on daily life. At 
present there seems to be a huge gulf betweeen the discussion on online and 
offline liberty. Any ideas on how we can bridge this gap? Or is it worth 
trying at all? Anything for a little bit of free and fresh air in 'cspace' ?

Cheers

Shuddha

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net