WikiLeaks, a Napster-style Internet gamechanger for 2010
If 1999 was the Year of Napster in the history of the Internet then 2010 will go down as the Year of WikiLeaks. Napster, the file-sharing renegade, upended the music industry and copyright in ways still being felt a decade later while WikiLeaks, for better or worse, is likely to have a similar impact on government secrecy and transparency. For now, WikiLeaks has governments, institutions and individuals around the world searching for answers to difficult questions surrounding US policy, free speech, Internet freedom, privacy, secrecy, transparency and the power -- and dangers -- of the Web. WikiLeaks has argued that its release of hundreds of thousands of secret US documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the inner workings of US diplomacy exposes US military abuses on the battlefield and "contradictions between the US's public persona and what it says behind closed doors." Its detractors denounce the release of the documents as a crime carried out by a disgruntled US soldier and abetted by a self-appointed truth-teller in the person of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Washington has been infuriated by WikiLeaks and is believed to be considering how to indict Assange over the huge leak. James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said any cyber clampdown may prove to be WikiLeaks's legacy. He noted that Napster was eventually shut down by the courts although it lives on in myriad reincarnations such as The Pirate Bay.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments