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Thank you Tom, it's a great pleasure to be here
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I'm very glad to have the opportunity to talk
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about the questions that concern me most
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in a context which allows us to talk a little bit
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about journalism and a little bit about ignorance
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and a little bit about abuse of power
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The problem presented by The Press
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that is to say by the machinery of communication
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since we began industrializing communication
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and fighting ignorance in Europe,
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in the 15th Century
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The problem posed by the Press
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is its almost impossible affiliation with power
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the Press and power are difficult to keep apart
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more difficult to keep apart than peanut butter
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and jelly, more difficult to keep apart
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than night and day.
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The Press and power fell into one another's
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embrace from the very beginning
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because from the very beginning it was clear
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that the alternative to an embrace between
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the Press and power
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is constant Revolution fueled by people's desire
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to know and to free themselves
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to act in their own best interests
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regardless of power's best interests
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Our adoption of the Press in the European world
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brought on the collapse of the unity
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of Christendom and the end of the system
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for the control of the mind
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that was the universal Catholic Church
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in that great intellectual, political,
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moral revolution we called the Reformation
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The response to the Reformation was the
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lesson in all European societies, Protestant
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and Catholic both that the Press could not
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be allowed to be free.
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and the result was censorship almost
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everywhere for hundreds of years
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In those few places in Europe -- in Holland
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and in the United Kingdom -- actually in England
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after 1650, and then again after 1695 --
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in those few places where the Press was free
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to print without control, the result was the
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intellectual, political, and moral revolution
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we call the Enlightenment and the
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French Revolution, that is
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a further demonstration that allowing people
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to know, to learn, to educate one another
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and to share will bring about
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deconcentration of Power and threat to every
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"ancien regime"
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But in the age of capitalist industrial media
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out of which we are now passing
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the marriage between the Press and power was
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once again a matter of magnetic attraction
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the Press, that is the industrial production and
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distribution of organized information --
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the Press became the handmaiden of the
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ownership class.
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Freedom of the Press
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the great American press critic
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A. J. Liebling wrote
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"Freedom of the Press belongs to him who owns one"
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and throught the 20th Century
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both with respect to the Press
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and to its close kissing cousin, Broadcast
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that was most affirmatively true
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We are now passing out of the age
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of the Press
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as we are passing out of the very idea
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that there is a machine that transforms
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information from the local and the temporary
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to the permanent and the ever-present.
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We are instead beginning to live inside
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a digital nervous system which links
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every human being on the planet
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to every other human being on the planet
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actually or potentially
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without any intermediaries
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By the end of the next generation
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whatever horrors or victories have happened
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in the meantime
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by the end of the next generation
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we will live in that world
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of pervasive human social interconnection
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which is what we really mean
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when we talk about "the Internet"
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Every fax machine -- well, the few remaining --
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every scanner, every printer, every telephone
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every camera, every video camera
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did I say telephone..telephone..telephone..
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telephone?
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Every object with electrical power behind it
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will be an information-gathering and
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distribution system controlled
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by some human being, somewhere,
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at one end or at the other.
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If it is controlled at the end where the
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human beings are, where they struggle
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where they seek to sell their vegetables
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where they are affronted by a policeman
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refusing to allow them to sell their vegetables
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where they act in the street to deal with the
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aftermath of a vegetable seller prevented
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from selling his vegetables by a
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officious policeman
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everywhere we will have knowledge
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being produced by people
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to free themselves.
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Consider this: In Indian right now
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the poorest of the poor have mobile phones
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and on that mobile phone -- each person's
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mobile phone -- every book, every piece of music
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every piece of video, every map, every
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scientific experiment, every kind of
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information that is useful and beautiful
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could be made available to every single person
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were it not for the rules against sharing
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All we have left in that great nervous system
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of humanity -- all that we have left that makes
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ignorance compulsory are the rules against
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sharing
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When the rules against sharing are gone
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-- and they will go --
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ignorance will, for the first time
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in the history of the human race,
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be entirely preventable everywhere
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You are watching around the world right now
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as young people demonstrate that they
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are willing to stand in front of bullets
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for Liberty.
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Later in this Century you will watch as
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young people around the world demonstrate
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that they are willing to stand in front
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of bullets in order to have the freedom to learn.
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When that happens, the human race will go through
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the most important revolution since 1789,
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and an "ancien regime" which deserves to perish
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will perish throughout the world
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here today we are discussing a few, simple,
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precursor parts to that enormous revolution.
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The dis-intermediation of the systems of
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controlled information production and
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distribution which have been with us since the
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morning after Gutenberg.
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But this is the day after the morning
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after Gutenberg.
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This is the moment when the disparities
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of power and the disparaties of access
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begin to give way
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and on the other side, at this moment,
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are almost all the governments
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and almost all the Press
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and almost all the incumbents who do not
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want the World to change.
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I was having dinner with a government
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official in Washington, D.C. earlier this week
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and I said to him "You know, about half the
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television networks in Europe seem to be chasing
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me for an interview to discuss the
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hypocrisy of American government
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Internet freedom policy,"
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I said "and if half the television networks in
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Europe want to talk to me about the hypocrisy
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of American Internet freedom policy, that
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suggests to me that the State Department
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has a problem.
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He said "Yes, they know they have a problem,
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and they want to do something about it."
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And they should,
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but every government on Earth
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has difficulty talking about Internet freedom
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straight, because every government on Earth
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is part of a structure of power which stands to
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lose in one way or another from free information
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flows, just as the great economic institutions
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dominating our time, the great surveillance
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institutions which offer you the chance to search
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as long as you share everything you search,
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and free email, as long as you let them read it,
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and free telephone calls, as long as they can
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listen in -- just for the purposes of advertsing,
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mind you.
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Please, bring half a million people here
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and live your social life inside my surveillance
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system. I'll take good care of you.
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Of course, unless you're in the street protesting
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against dictatorship, in which case what we will
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tell you is: our great social networking service
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is rigidly neutral between dictators and
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people in the street fighting them...
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not our concern here at whatchamacallit
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This is a transitional stage, you understand?
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I've told you where we're going. Now the question
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is how are we going to get there?
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Here's how we're going to get there:
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the World's going to fill up with cheap, small,
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low-powered devices that are going to replace
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most of the computers you're accustomed to.
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All those big ones on desktops and in closets,
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and in rooms full of servers somewhere, replaced by things
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not much larger than a cell phone charger, and
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very, very, very much more capable
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than the first computer you ever owned,
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whichever one it was
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or maybe even the computer you're
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using now.
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Those devices are going to cost next to nothing
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and they're going to be everywhere, and
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we're going to make software that runs in them
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all of them, that a 12 year old can install
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and a 6 year old can use
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which will allow people to communicate freely
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everywhere, all the time, net of state control
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net of profitmaker control,
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net of control, they will be Freedom Boxes.
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They will make Freedom.
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We don't have to make the boxes -- the boxes
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are going to fill the world. We just need to make
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software. And the good news is that we don't
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need to make software, we make it already.
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Everybody in this room with an Android phone is
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using it. Everybody in this room who has
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touched Facebook today, they were using it
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on the other side.
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Everybody who used a bank or a supermarket
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or an insurance company or a train station
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in the last week interacted with our software.
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It's everywhere. We made it to be everywhere
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It's Free.
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That means we can copy it, modify it,
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and redistribute it freely.
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It also means that it works for people,
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not for companies.
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All of this is already done. This is the result
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of 25 years of effort on our part.
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Now, right now, in the street, right now,
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we begin to show why it protects Freedom
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and why people need it.
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And we begin to prepare to deliver it to them.
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A. J. Liebling, that press critic I was
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speaking of before, wrote once
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"The American press reminds me of a
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12 billion dollar superheated, absolutely
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state of the art fish cannery relying for all
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its fish on 6 guys in leaky rowboats."
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The point being, of course, that the great
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monolithic industrial press of the 20th
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Century did everything well except reporting,
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which it did poorly, because reporting
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was the free lunch in the saloon, and any time
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the saloonkeeper could cut back on it, he did.
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I don't need to tell you that that process has
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accelerated since A. J. Liebling died in 1975.
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So we live now in a world where we're
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about to fill a gap in reporting.
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You know what fills the gap in reporting -- it was
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referred to in the moments we've already had together
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it's all those phones, all those video cameras, all those tweets.
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In other words, we have already democratized
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the system of reporting.
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What is scary for the establishment
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about Wikileaks is that Wikileaks is to
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newsgathering what Craig's List is to
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classified advertising.
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It changes the economy of leaking
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I hate to be correcting anybody on any point
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but I should point out that Wikileaks
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has not released 250,000 State Department
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cables. It has 250,000 State Department cables
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and has released about 2,000 of them.
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Which is about the number of diplomatic
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cables showed to diplomatic correspondents around the world
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working for major newspapers every single day.
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But nobody says that's treason, because that's
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the official commerce in leaking, from which
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government officials and press lords and
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owners around the World derive benefit
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every single day
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Economic power, political power
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and the power to keep people ignorant.
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What is happening in the 'Net, now,
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in those phones, in those Tor exit nodes,
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and what will be happening in the World
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multiplied by a hundred, shortly,
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in all those Freedom Boxes is,
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information being free for the benefit of those
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who need.
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Ask yourself what will happen when
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everybody who needs can have
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and everybody who can make, supplies.
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What will happen in neighborhoods
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What will happen in police stations
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What will happen when there's a fire
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Or an earthquake, what will happen when there's
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a tyrant coming down.
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Those same little boxes I'm talking about
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will also be able to do wireless mesh networking
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that is to say that if somebody turns out
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the telecommunications network in a neighborhood
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the neighborhood will keep functioning.
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What Mr. Mubarak and the men around him
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misunderstood. The reason that he's in
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Sharm el-Sheikh, hoping to buy a single floor through apartment
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in one of the towers being built in Mecca, no doubt
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The reason that that happened is that
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Mr. Mubarak and his advisers thought that
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if you turn off the Internet, you turn off
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the Internet generation.
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That was wrong. Because, in fact, it isn't
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a particular system of telecoms,
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or a particular social networking structure,
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a particular database of 'twats' ... or twuts..
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or twoots, or whatever they call them
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It's not the technology that makes it work
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it's that human beings have figured out
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something about society if they grow up
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in the 'Net.
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Most human beings, most of the time,
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in most social contexts, believe that the
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social network valuable to them is the people
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they see every day, and the people with whom
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they have strong emotional connections.
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That's how most people, almost all the time,
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think about the social world.
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That's because we evolved for millions of years to think that way.
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As parts of small groups of a few dozen
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ground-dwelling primates.
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Our neurology evolved for that
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our social heuristics evolved for that
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we think that the social network robust
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enough to support us, is the people
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we see around us and the people we care about
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who care about us back.
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But the generation of people growing up
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inside the 'Net now knows, knows viscerally, knows all the time
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as a matter of habit, is that the social network
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that is robust enough to change the world
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around you includes the thousands of people
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you don't live near, and with whom you don't
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have any direct emotional connection,
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but are the people who believe what you
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believe, and want to do something about it, too.
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What we learned at the end of the 20th Century
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first in Poland, and then in other places, is that
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what makes revolution is solidarity.
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The ability of people who do not live near
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one another in social or geographic space
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who do not have immediate personal bonds
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binding them together, to percieve the ability
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to self-organize for the sudden achievement
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of deeply felt social ends
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what the network does -- what life with the network does is to
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teach humans that the cost of making solidarity
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has gone way down.
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That it is easier and faster to make solidarity
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than it has ever been before, and if you take
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a bunch of people who know that lesson, and
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you turn the network off, they go right on making
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solidarity the best way they know how.
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They drop leaflets in the street, they make
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carrier pigeons, they have phone trees.
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They do whatever it is, because the real skill
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being learned by humanity is the skill of
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self-organization, and what we're seeing right
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now, today, in the Maghreb, right now,
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right today, right now, is that solidarity made
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by self-organization is stronger than machine
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gun bullets.
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All over the world tyranny likes to say "the
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alternative to me is chaos," and all around the
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world everybody can see that isn't true.
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So what we're going to do is we're going to make
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cheap things, and we're going to fill them
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with Free Software, and we're going to put them
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in everybody's hands, and we're going to say
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"Here. That makes solidarity. Use it. Be well.
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Be Free"
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It's going to work.
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There isn't any reason to be on the side
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of the Press, just as there isn't any reason
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to be on the side of power. It's simple, now.
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Power has moved to the edge of the network,
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and it will continue to do that for a generation
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to come.
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It will make a grand revolution, and it will
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change the fate of billions of human beings.
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It will make ignorance obsolete, and when it
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00:18:07,507 --> 00:18:10,386
makes ignorance obsolete, it will change the
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future of the human condition.
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The Press isn't going to do that. Power isn't
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going to do that.
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People are going to do that.
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The technology to empower people to do that
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00:18:22,530 --> 00:18:26,292
exists already. All it needs is a little bit
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of refinement.
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We're the guys who refine it. We don't seek
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money. We don't seek power. We only want
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to share.
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Everyone wants to talk about Internet freedom,
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except us.
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We don't want to talk about Internet freedom,
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we just want to do it.
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Join us.
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Thank you very much.