Jaron Lanier's recent lengthy essay about Wikileaks... misses the central lesson of this affair: the increasing control of (relatively) unaccountable corporations and states over the key components of the Internet, and their increased willingness to use this control in politicized ways to impose a "dissent tax" on content they find objectionable. Ability to disseminate one's ideas on the Internet is now a sine qua non of inclusion in the global public sphere. However, the Internet is not a true public sphere; it is a public sphere erected on private property, what I have dubbed a "quasi-public sphere," where the property owners can sideline and constrain dissent.

I have to say that I agree with this. As I've said, the primary consequence of Wikileaks will be the tools, process, and laws that will be used in the future to suppress other leaks. The tool that seems to have emerged is deactivation of service by corporations in response to unofficial "requests" for cooperation made by senior politicians. That result is a worst case scenario for people who are concerned about due process of law and safeguarding fundamental rights. It means that any disfavored content can simply be removed forthwith. The "digiratti" ought to be focused on that problem, which is a real issue, rather that dithering about unrealistic cypherpunk fantasies about the collapse of states, which would only matter if things were drawn out to an extreme that they are very unlikely to reach in reality. I think the state's own recent aversion to the rule of law is a greater threat to its long term existence than the fact that secrets can be leaked on the Internet.

Tufekci presents her views on Wikileaks more comprehensively in this blog post which is definitely worth reading.

This kind of information only matters if it gets out to a wider public and even then only if it is presented within a particular context. If newspapers don’t print stories based on leaked information, if the very act of obtaining the information is can be portrayed to be criminal and treasonous, then the mere fact that the information is technically available to anyone who wants it will have no discernible consequence.

Wikileaks Exposes Internet's Dissent Tax, not Nerd Supremacy - Zeynep Tufekci - Technology - The Atlantic