freedom

Someone accidentally posted this link in an IRC channel and since I was curious I checked it out. It's a pretty nice and functional map of freedom in the world, mapping countries in three categories: not free, partly free and free.

From a quick survey of the map it looks like the half of the world, and counting such highly populated places like China, even more than half live without essential freedoms, which is quite sad.

Yet, if we push the boundaries in terms of defining true freedom for an individual I think even more countries would be in the "partly free" category, but that's another discussion.

Here are some excellent video excerpts from a "Freedom of Expression®" movie, based on a book with the same title.

It is about copyright, its expansion and its negative effects on culture.

Why is Free (as in freedom) software free (as in free beer)? A good answer in this post!

Gustavo's post led to an interesting short discussion with yours truly. Is the availability of a free computing environment an undeclared human right, or is it merely a necessity for preserving human rights in today's society? Splitting of hairs, writing of words .

This is a link to the Wikipedia entry on this excellent series by Adam Curtis. The entry has a good synopsis of what was discussed in the programmes, wich were all about perceptions of freedom and how they have changed and have been altered over the years. If you get a chance search YouTube for the episodes, it is well worth spending time watching them.