The Commons

First off, I'd like to say wow, Boiller's article really opened my eyes as to why libraries are so important. I am not the type of person who goes into a library to pick out a few books either for personal or academic use, but reading about how the government and copyright officials are speculating that libraries are a form of piracy is just weird. I remember going to the public library in my home town when I was really little for story-time. I go to meet new kids and enjoyed the librarian using funny voices to imitate the characters in the book. I got to pick out fun books and sometimes magazines, that normally I would not get to read. That's what libraries are about.

Libraries are extremely important to democracy. Democracy is all about letting people have a say in what happens with their lives and the government. City libraries have the word "public" in front of their name for a reason, anyone has access to it! That's the whole point. I understand why some people can see that as piracy because the knowledge is just right there for anyone to grab, but there are trying to take about a person's right to free knowledge, basically saying that you cannot learn through reading a book unless you purchase it. This is also related to the internet today because both can allow free access to a number of resources such as books, movies, newspaper articles, and magazines. They are both sharing networks, just different ways of going about it.

I found that Vaidhyanathan's article was a little difficult to read, but once I understood what he was getting at, it wasn't too bad. Okay, I think he means that anarchy in the library is a good thing because he does say that stronger efforts towards control can backfire, leading to less controllable, and less desirable conditions. I think this means that if people are contained to only creating or accessing certain things, then they will be more prone to act out. For example, I think that parents who keep their children more sheltered and put too much pressure on them, the child is more likely to rebel. I'm not saying that this happens all the time, but I have plenty of personal experience with this. People need to be able to create whatever they want, as Vaidhyanathan says, "these are valuable behaviors that help creators and citizens shape their world." Ultimately, he is hoping that the government and public can find a happy medium between anarchy and oligarchy because lets face it, we do need to be controlled sometimes otherwise our world would be total chaos.