There has always been a basic incompatibility between democracy and computing. (The illustration of our basic thesis is from OpenP2P.Com.)

It's that computing is a binary system. It's on-or-off. When you get enough light bulbs you can model anything. You can make it appear that you've got a fully analog system. But it's still binary.

The binary choice in Internet governance is between anarchy and absolutism.

Here's anarchy. A new set of file-trading protocols are coming out that further frustrate the RIAA through the use of encryption, anonymity, and the use of multiple IP addresses to further mask identity.

Here's absolutism. It's about a plan by big business and big government to "lock down" the Net, eliminating anonymity and giving the copyright industries absolute control over everything that is produced, seen, and passed along a digital pathway.

Personally, I'm in neither camp. I doubt many people really are in either camp. The so-called absolutists say they just want to enable the enforcement of existing laws. The so-called anarchists say they want to enable the enforcement of existing rights. See, both sides are, at heart, quite reasonable.

In a democracy there are no such absolutes. Most murders are cleared, but only after a laborious process in which the rights of the accused are protected each step of the way. Politics always results in messy compromise, because that's the way the Founders intended it, with checks-and-balances everywhere. (The illustration is from a kids' guide to our founding documents at GPO.Gov.)

But the binary world can't wait for courts, or Congresses. Where there is an imbalance between rights and power, it's an absolute necessity to engineer a way around it. Justice delayed, in this case, is truly justice denied. On the other hand, the same tools used on behalf of rights are also used on behalf of crime, and the Web is now teeming with criminals -- scam artists and spammers, virus writers and hackers -- with the cops several steps behind.

Any foolproof way of creating rights is also a foolproof way of creating wrongs. Any foolproof way of preventing wrongs is also a foolproof way of denying rights.

You see, binary. And the only people whose rights are maximized are those who know best the tools of criminality.

The only solution is, I believe, what it was in the beginning, and ever shall be. That is a Bill of Rights for Internet users, one that guarantees free speech and fair use, along with the respect of a process by which criminals can be dealt with, no matter where they are. People don't think of the Bill of Rights as creating something like that, a process for dealing with crime, but it does just that, by setting boundaries within which the rights of police and prosecutors will be respected.

We need to get out of the binary trap before we're trapped on either side of it, because both sides in the end are just different forms of tyranny.