This is such a sad story, but at least technology and the brave bloggers/citizen journalists are trying to get the word out.

I wrote two posts analyzing it on my blog -

http://knightnewschallenge.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/citizen-journalism-in-myanmarburma-tales-of-conflict-writ-large-and-live-on-the-web/

http://knightnewschallenge.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/the-more-they-try-to-suppress-the-situation-the-more-will-come-out/

As the previous commenter said, at least the atrocities committed by the military regime are being made plain to the world - hopefully the rest of the world won't stand idle and let them get away with it.

Honestly, I find them a little scary too. Like all these creepy crawly hands reaching for you!

I'm a writer and personally, I've always felt that I've benefited greatly from the internet in general. Blogging and other forms of self-publishing have been a great way for me to draw attention to my work and have led to lots of freelance gigs and therefore, cash. Having lots of my work online is also a great way to show prospective clients what I can do.

I agree with the above poster who said that the basic argument was similar to Andrew Keen's (An aside - does his personality just put anyone else off? Regardless of his work or opinions, his sheer distrust of anything created by someone that is not a "professional" or an "expert" gets on my nerves. There are TONS of good sites, good artwork, and good writing created by people who don't necessarily have a degree or mountains of qualifications in those fields. Yes, there are lots of amateurs who are pretty bad, but there are also plenty who just haven't been around long enough or don't have the requisite degrees to be considered experts. Okay, rant over.)

Anyways, look it like the music industry - just because piracy and internet exist doesn't mean people have stopped paying for music - just look at itunes. Also, reading books online not nearly as pleasant as curling up with an actual hard copy (even with a laptop - believe me, I've tried). Honestly, I highly doubt that rise of ebooks and other changes in publishing that result from the eventual worldwide ubiquity of the web will cause the demise of print books. Just look at the commenter who posted all the changes in the publishing world that have occured since Kennedy was president!

However, there is one industry that I think DOES have reason to be very, very worried is print newspapers. Mobile devices (yes, like the iphone) and the speed at which breaking news hits the web pretty much kick the print edition's butt. Also, online you can tailor your news and information to the topics you are most interested in (and advertisers can match this content with ads, and we all know how much they love targeted ads). Just look at all the citizen journalism sites out there (Daily Kos (http://dailykos.com) and such) and what organizations like the Knight Foundation are doing (they have a contest for people who have projects related to online news delivery, local and/or citizen journalism, and cover a specific region) with their news challenge (http://newschallenge.org).

The book publishing world appears to be able to weather the internet storm, in my opinion, but other types of publishing may not be so capable.