Information cannot be free
by Josh Zeidner

Finally, the purpose of this essay is to dispell the popular "information should be free" rubric, to show that our reality is merely the interplay of these two forces: noise, and information (or as termed in previous essays communication and information). We cannot base social policies on this platform, and it is utterly futile to try to realize it (Freenet, ect. ). Often times, social inequality is blamed on the percieved obstruction to the access to information. Social inequality, I hypothesize, is based on other unknown factors (social inertia?).

Ripercorrendo l'epopea Napster. Storia di un mito o ricordo per una meteora?
di Francesco Cisternino

Tenteremo di comprendere come siano bastati poco più di due anni di iperattività a far tremare il regime oligarchico delle Big Five, le cinque grandi case discografiche mondiali (Vivendi Universal, Bmg, Emi, Aol Time Warner, Sony) e a far impazzire i giudici americani, dimostrando come il recentissimo Digital Millennium Copyright Act sia in realtà una legge tutt'altro che precisa e aggiornata. Un terremoto giudiziario e commerciale che continua a far discutere artisti, discografici, giuristi, massmediologi e soprattutto il pubblico di Internet e della musica in rete che ha decretato il successo planetario di un vero e proprio sistema di fruizione dei media, come dimostra la crescente "napsterizzazione" dei videogames.

Extensions, Boundaries & Double Crossings
Or: We don't trust anybody. Shadowing Theory and Technology constructing subjects
by Mercedes Bunz

For many years now it has been common to refer to technology as an "extension of man". [...] Although Marshall McLuhan is the most popular name connected with that theoretical concept, the concept is quite a lot older. It is dating from before the 19th century anthropology all the way to the ancient Greeks and Aristoteles. He already outlined technology as a substitute for biological defects and technical development and understood it as a cultural progression. And with or without Hollywood we still seem to believe in the same idea and understand technology as progression and an indicator of a nation's status. The only shift might be that we exchanged adjectives and replaced "cultural" with "economical".

What Napster Really Needs
by Adam Curry

This article has taken me a combined 20 years of broadcast and computer experience to compile and I couldn't be more excited about the possibilities the Internet can bring now that we have witnessed the cultural change from the traditional broadcast models to the Peer to Peer networking model technologies such as Napster and Gnutella have shown us.

On the Links Between Open Source and Culture
by Kim Veltman

Implicit in all this is that there are profound links between developments in culture and the rise of open source, that both are stimulating a new kind of sharing. Some would go further and claim that hackers in the virtuous sense are a new kind of lay monk. The lecture will explore these parallels between the sharing of culture and the sharing of open source and claim that there needs to be an open source approach to culture; that there are philosophical reasons why culture has traditionally been in the public sphere, and that the developments of open source can lead to new sources of spirituality in a larger sense.