Do you like your e'mail postage free? Do you think that you should pay for bandwith only and not what you use it for? Do you think podcasts and video podcasts should remain un-censored and exempt from the confines of the FCC? Yea, me too.
The internet is really, still in its childhood if not infancy. For a while it was a small enough arena that it could fly under the radar. There were no laws defining or concerning it. Now, slowly, as it has started to take over as our … everything … radio, video store, mall, there is much more at stake. Slowly, the laws of the internet world are taking shape and it's going to be up to us to make sure that they take the right shape. Some of the issues at hand are for protection. Others are attempts to capitalize on the new market economy through legislation rather than good business, something I take serious issue with. So as a concerned geek, I encourage you to get invovled in IP and internet politics. The EFF, founded in 1990, has been working for many years to protect our online rights. They recently spun-off a political action committee, IPac, to break new ground, lobbying members of congress that they, as a non-profit, could not.
IPac is doing a couple of very interesting things. Firstly, to raise congress people's awareness, they sent 12 iPods funded by private citizens and loaded with photos, music and video all available freely under the creative commons license. We didn't have anti-spam legislation until senators got spam. We can't get pro-sharing legislation until senators realize the merits of p2p sharing. They are also busy compiling of lists of congresspeople who both further and obstruct the agenda of IPac as based on the way they have voted on various issues in the past and statements they have made.
I encourage you to get involved in whatever way you can.