Libraries embody architecture and composition: they physically represent the idea that attaining knowledge leads to enlightenment, equality, and ethics. The ashen destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria was a terrible strike against progress, with the suspects including a Roman (Julius Caesar), a Christian (Theophilus of Alexandria), and a Moslem (Caliph Omar). Books, knowledge, and freedom of communication are tools of the oppressed. Regardless of what transpired so long ago, libraries remain with us today.

The Internet and World Wide Web have become the symbolic successors to the Great Library of Alexandria: havens of logic and reason for those who seek it. Like Alexandria, people oppose the electronic world, seeking to suffocate, subvert, and silence its spread of knowledge, idealism, justice, and reality.

Such opposition must not spread. When a government censors the Internet, or seizes web pages, it infringes upon the rights of its citizens, and is a futile assault on the practical application of a distributed global network.

Where rationality and reason prosper, there will always be refuge for knowledge and the freedom of information.