Z:gnu-www-ja-moglen-harvard-speech-2004--82f478-But I would take one more step/en

But I would take one more step with you to discuss the problem that lies behind the problem of free hardware. We are living now in a world in which hardware is cheap and software is free, and if all the hardware continues to work pretty much the way it works now, our major problem will be that bandwidth is now treated in the world also as a product, rather than a public utility. And you are allowed to have, in general, as much bandwidth as you can pay for. So then in the world in which we now exist, though hardware is cheap and software is free, there are major difficulties in disseminating knowledge and encouraging the diffusion of science and the useful arts, because people are too poor to pay for the bandwidth that they require in order to learn.