I just finished watching Band of Brothers. My parents bought it on DVD a while back, and every once in a while I lug it out and watch it. It's a great story, and if you haven't seen it, stop reading this and go rent it. It's the story of the 101st Airborne. The paratroopers, the guys who parachuted into enemy teritory, doing the hardest jobs to make the war easier for everyone else. This post isn't a review of the series, though.

Every time I watch the series, at the end, I'm always left feeling a little down. It's not the same feeling that I get when I watch some Hollywood blockbuster about saving the world or what-have-you. It's not the same feeling I get from reading a book or graphic novel and wishing that my life was a tenth as interesting. No, what I feel after finishing the last episode of Band of Brothers is something else entirely.

I'm left with...anger. Dissatisfaction. Bewilderment. I don't know what the best word is to describe it is. I'm not really a person who knows how to truly use words. So I'm going to try and get this out as simply as possible.

I often get the same feeling out of other war-themed movies. Movies like "Saving Private Ryan" leave me thinking the same thoughts at the end. But nothing else produces the same intensity as Band of Brothers does. The reason for that is simple.

Sixty years ago, one of the greatest ( if not the greatest ) wars came to an end with the surrender of Japan. After six years ( or eight, if you're counting from the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War) of bloody, relentless war, nearly fifty million people were dead. The number of people that went to war and died fighting is simply staggering. The fact that all those that went to fight did so for one reason is even more staggering. You all know this, but they all died so that we could live our lives in freedom.

If you've watched the Band of Brothers series, you'll know that at the start of the series, the vetrans recount one of the main reasons they joined was for the pay. Being in the military was a fairly well paying job. But after two years of continuous fighting, most of them were truly questioning why they were still fighting. And then in the second last episode, that reason hits them in the face, in all it's awful, horrible glory. They fought, and died, so we wouldn't have to live in a world where people thought it was okay to kill people of a different race or creed. So that the Holocaust would never be practised on a world-wide stage. They fought and died to stop one of the crulest regiemes this planet has seen. The fought and died so we could be free, in every sense of the word.

What angers me is that we're slowly letting it happen to us. We're letting our freedom be taken from us. But this time, it isn't a sweeping change. It isn't a new political power suddenly rising to power and throwing disidents into concentration camps. It's happening every day, all around us.

A little while back, I wrote about the poor guy who got detained for 24 hours for acting like he does every day. Today I read on Slashdot about Microsofts' attempt to bring use-once dvd's to the consumer market. I'm pretty sure you've all heard of the US Patriot Act, that little thing that lets the US government detain a person for no reason what-so-ever. Things like this are being created by corporations and our governments every day. Hidden under the guise of bringing us more value for our dollar or protecting us from terrorists, are products and laws taking away our freedom.

I know, I hear many of you ( two out of my three readers ) arguing with these points. Okay, to prove my point, let's take a look at three things you probably use on a daily ( or nearly-daily ) basis: your computer, music cds and dvds.

Firstly, your computer. Do you run Windows? You've given up a fair portion of your freedom right there. Unless you're using open source software ( like Firefox,OpenOffice.org, or even Linux ), you don't own much of the software you use. If you've ever used a progam where you had to sign ( also known as "Click Here to Agree" ) a EULA, you don't own the software. All you own is the disc your software came on. Why is that? EULA stands for End User License Agreement. When you license something from anywhere, you're only agreeing to use that product on the terms of the license. And in the terms of most any EULA that you sign, it means you don't own the software that you're using. That's right, from your copy of Solitare to the operating system it runs on, Windows, you don't own it.

It boils down to the same thing with cds and dvds. But with those, it's a special case. You aren't signing a contract. But theres a special law for this. I can't remember the term for it [EDIT: I think it's called a "shrinkwrap license"], but it basically goes like this: by opening the cd/dvd, you agree to the terms of the license. That's right, without even having to show you the license, they can get you to agree to it. You'd think that'd be illegal, but it isn't.

How do these things happen? How is it that we've gotten to the point where we don't truly own many of the things we buy? It's because of things like copyright and patent law. It's because of people who get themselves into a position to pass laws that benifit the people that financed their campaign, not the people that voted for them. It's because of a legal system so complex, it requires several years of law school to even begin to comprehend it. But mostly, it happens because we let it happen. We let the politicians draft and pass those laws. We let the corporations 'rent' us the things that we buy.

Mabey it's because we live in a world that has become saturated. Mabey because it is so easy to find the information that we get lazy and don't look it up. Possibly there is simply too much information to know where to even start looking. But there are people out there trying to raise awareness of such issues. The Electronic Freedom Foundation (the EFF) have been campagining for better rights for computer users for some time now. GrokLaw is a site detailing the legal battles between the open source world and the closed source world. There are many others sites trying to show us how we're loosing our digital ( and physical ) freedom, and are trying to combat these losses. Don't sit around waiting for me to give you a link, go on a Google search yourself.

In the end, what does this have to do with the millions who died to stop the Axis in World War II?

Those soliders ( and nurses and other non-combat personelle ), gave their lives so we could live free. Today, we're letting those freedoms be taken away, bit by tiny bit. If we don't stand up and let ourselves be heard, one day we may not be able to.

And that angers, dissatisfies, and bewilders me.

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