Written by Tom Clancy around 2001, the book is set in early 2010s. The book is not worth a review per se, but I am writing this because it confuses free as in freedom with free as in free lunch. Even 10 years after the dissolution of USSR, the author was still afraid of Communism and Socialism. This book is nothing but a knee-jerk reaction towards the presumed threat of deprived "intellectual property rights" or "intellectual communism"!
Long, Boring Story Short:
CyberNation is a group or a corporate, you can say, consisting of management, hackers, PROs, lobbyists, lawyers etc. Their aim is to replace all the ISPs and fill their space with their own version of Internet, where there is no "Intellectual Property" i.e. people only need to subscribe to the CyberNation to get all their music, movies, books, porn, scientific journals and whatever else that can be downloaded. CyberNation will make money by advertising. So to press the people to make the switch from their regular ISPs to CyberNation, they do all the dirty tricks from DDoS attacks to blowing up hardware using bombs! A special task force called Net Force, tries to identify and stop CyberNation. There are lots of useless diversions like too much of description about martial arts training on both sides (but no martial art fight in the climax!), virtual reality, bashing Russians and commies, New Age bullshit and incorrect futuristic predictions. At last, the "good" guys win.
A Look into CyberNation:
Have you heard about Free Basics by Facebook? CyberNation sounds more like this. It runs ads and campaigns to entice people to support them, just like what Facebook did with Internet.org/Free Basics. It has lobbyists placed in many countries to convince politicians and authorities to make changes in laws exactly like what Facebook did by asking us to send support letters to TRAI. CyberNation has all the money and means to do it exactly like Facebook. Their aim is to loop in more people so that they can earn more by advertising to their user base, again exactly like Facebook. I can feel the ennui here. But I couldn't help.
But CyberNation is against "Intellectual property", the meaningless umbrella term that clubs together various different and uncorrelated concepts like copyright, trademark, patents etc. Instead of me struggling with my half-baked knowledge to explain it, you can hear from Dr. Stallman himself (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html). People who really care for freedom of knowledge and information won't accept invasion of privacy and anything that disturbs net-neutrality. That is why FSF and other like-minded people are vehemently against Facebook's Free Basics and other such schemes that can disturb the net-neutrality. But CyberNation is pro-freedom and anti-freedom at the same time. Like a typical Right-wing person who fights against abortion in public life and forces his daughter to undergo one on her teenage pregnancy to save the "family honor", Tom Clancy can envision such organization without a problem!
CyberNation is much like Mark Zuckerberg running the Pirate Bay. One thing the book got correct is the character of Jasmine Chance. What a person will become when educated in management and shaped by the corporates, a ruthless, self-worshiping person who cares the least about others in achieving their selfish goals. She is much like the so called role models of this generation namely Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Ambanis, Tatas etc. Bribing, killing, cheating all are fine provided you get what you want. This is what today's "business" has boiled down to. Everyone else is labelled as losers or considered running charities.
The book says that the "Intellectual Property Rights" is very important for innovation and without the motivation of monetary benefits it is impossible for new inventions and researches happening. Yeah! We have seen that in the case of Daraprim! Who invented that drug? But the novel idea of "Intellectual Property Rights" allowed a retard like Martin Shkreli to exploit people using a drug that was invented decades before he was born! Similarly the book confuses resale of used book and making unauthorized copies of a book and selling it in market. Coming back to the drugs, what type of drug will get more funds today? Is it the one that will prevent millions of deaths or the one that can amass trillions of Dollars? We all know the answer.
The greedy, cut-throat completion of the laissez faire economy won't address the "needs" of the people more than the "wants" of the rich any day! For Tom Clancy, putting needs of the general public before wants of the rich is communism. He can call it whatever he wants, but for me this is the very definition of human nature. A monkey never feels guilty for snatching a banana from another monkey. And a group of monkey watching this won't condemn it. But we humans do. If we sit back and allow corporates to exploit labor and resources of the poor for the luxury of the rich, we will be no better than monkeys!
Conclusion:
So sad that Tom Clancy is no more. I am pretty much sure that he will use the exact same arguments like "private property", "individual freedom and rights", "free market" etc. to support whatever Facebook is doing. He will be with the people who are arguing for paid fast-lanes in Internet. All that mattered to him is the rich to win over the poor. He wants the strong to trample the weak with the help of governments holding the poor down with their laws and regulations. That is what democracy is in Clancy's view. But surely a true CyberNation will rise. It will be rule of people. It will fight for freedom of and freedom for ideas, arts, science and knowledge. It will fight for the people's privacy, freedoms and rights. It will shatter the evil monopolies built with the backing of inhuman laws. On that day, NSA or Clancy's Net Force will be silent spectators who will watch the giant force of people marching towards true equality!
Long, Boring Story Short:
CyberNation is a group or a corporate, you can say, consisting of management, hackers, PROs, lobbyists, lawyers etc. Their aim is to replace all the ISPs and fill their space with their own version of Internet, where there is no "Intellectual Property" i.e. people only need to subscribe to the CyberNation to get all their music, movies, books, porn, scientific journals and whatever else that can be downloaded. CyberNation will make money by advertising. So to press the people to make the switch from their regular ISPs to CyberNation, they do all the dirty tricks from DDoS attacks to blowing up hardware using bombs! A special task force called Net Force, tries to identify and stop CyberNation. There are lots of useless diversions like too much of description about martial arts training on both sides (but no martial art fight in the climax!), virtual reality, bashing Russians and commies, New Age bullshit and incorrect futuristic predictions. At last, the "good" guys win.
A Look into CyberNation:
Have you heard about Free Basics by Facebook? CyberNation sounds more like this. It runs ads and campaigns to entice people to support them, just like what Facebook did with Internet.org/Free Basics. It has lobbyists placed in many countries to convince politicians and authorities to make changes in laws exactly like what Facebook did by asking us to send support letters to TRAI. CyberNation has all the money and means to do it exactly like Facebook. Their aim is to loop in more people so that they can earn more by advertising to their user base, again exactly like Facebook. I can feel the ennui here. But I couldn't help.
But CyberNation is against "Intellectual property", the meaningless umbrella term that clubs together various different and uncorrelated concepts like copyright, trademark, patents etc. Instead of me struggling with my half-baked knowledge to explain it, you can hear from Dr. Stallman himself (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html). People who really care for freedom of knowledge and information won't accept invasion of privacy and anything that disturbs net-neutrality. That is why FSF and other like-minded people are vehemently against Facebook's Free Basics and other such schemes that can disturb the net-neutrality. But CyberNation is pro-freedom and anti-freedom at the same time. Like a typical Right-wing person who fights against abortion in public life and forces his daughter to undergo one on her teenage pregnancy to save the "family honor", Tom Clancy can envision such organization without a problem!
CyberNation is much like Mark Zuckerberg running the Pirate Bay. One thing the book got correct is the character of Jasmine Chance. What a person will become when educated in management and shaped by the corporates, a ruthless, self-worshiping person who cares the least about others in achieving their selfish goals. She is much like the so called role models of this generation namely Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Ambanis, Tatas etc. Bribing, killing, cheating all are fine provided you get what you want. This is what today's "business" has boiled down to. Everyone else is labelled as losers or considered running charities.
The book says that the "Intellectual Property Rights" is very important for innovation and without the motivation of monetary benefits it is impossible for new inventions and researches happening. Yeah! We have seen that in the case of Daraprim! Who invented that drug? But the novel idea of "Intellectual Property Rights" allowed a retard like Martin Shkreli to exploit people using a drug that was invented decades before he was born! Similarly the book confuses resale of used book and making unauthorized copies of a book and selling it in market. Coming back to the drugs, what type of drug will get more funds today? Is it the one that will prevent millions of deaths or the one that can amass trillions of Dollars? We all know the answer.
The greedy, cut-throat completion of the laissez faire economy won't address the "needs" of the people more than the "wants" of the rich any day! For Tom Clancy, putting needs of the general public before wants of the rich is communism. He can call it whatever he wants, but for me this is the very definition of human nature. A monkey never feels guilty for snatching a banana from another monkey. And a group of monkey watching this won't condemn it. But we humans do. If we sit back and allow corporates to exploit labor and resources of the poor for the luxury of the rich, we will be no better than monkeys!
So sad that Tom Clancy is no more. I am pretty much sure that he will use the exact same arguments like "private property", "individual freedom and rights", "free market" etc. to support whatever Facebook is doing. He will be with the people who are arguing for paid fast-lanes in Internet. All that mattered to him is the rich to win over the poor. He wants the strong to trample the weak with the help of governments holding the poor down with their laws and regulations. That is what democracy is in Clancy's view. But surely a true CyberNation will rise. It will be rule of people. It will fight for freedom of and freedom for ideas, arts, science and knowledge. It will fight for the people's privacy, freedoms and rights. It will shatter the evil monopolies built with the backing of inhuman laws. On that day, NSA or Clancy's Net Force will be silent spectators who will watch the giant force of people marching towards true equality!
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