Far from being displaced by the digital Panoptican, the 'intellectual commons' of the Net continues to expand at an exponential rate. Free speech is a free gift. Although often seen as pioneers of the hi-tech future, media corporations are terrified of this emerging paradigm. For the rapid growth of the Net exposes the contingency of their intellectual property. Quite spontaneously, most people are opting to share knowledge rather than to trade media commodities over the Net.
Free speech can flourish without free trade.
However, this centralised vision of computer-mediated communications is already technically obsolete. But, without constant monitoring from above, the effectiveness of encryption and other security devices is limited. When no one is looking, media commodities will spontaneously transmute into free gifts on the Net. Only fear of punishment can force everyone inside the digital Panoptican. For the media corporations, the 'negative' form of media freedom now means state enforcement of economic censorship.