Lately I've been reading a lot about various governments trying to impose sanctions on Internet (ab)users and indeed trying to enforce an Internet blacklist.
This makes me furious.
Anyone who considers Internet restriction is almost immediately reminded of The Great Firewall of China. Citizens prevented from finding information about things happening in their own country, because their Government doesn't want them to.
Such the extent of anger caused by China's attempts to throttle its web users, Google threatened to leave China.
So it's with great surprise I learn about America attempting to build an Internet blacklist. Although not a resident of the United States (thankfully, it seems) I would urge each and every citizen to sign this petition to prevent these vile ideals oozing their contaminants across to the rest of the West and indeed the entire planet.
The Internet should never be censored. It has proved time and time again to be a vital vessel with which citizens in third-world countries can get the real story out.
To refer to what's relevent here in my own country, the United Kingdom there is also the Digital Economy Bill or as I prefer to refer to it the Digital Economy BULL. I speak of this with the most prominent regard to its so-called defensive measures against piracy, i.e. its attempts to strangle any Internet user who dares access information they haven't paid through the nose for by acting as a proxy for the media industries.
Members of parliament in todays society do not have sufficient knowledge about the Internet to be passing such insane legislation which was virtually entirely instigated by media corporations.
"The internet is a series of tubes".
Before the recent elections here I wrote to all of my MP's on their thoughts of the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and one of the responses did not amuse.
My local MP for Conservative responded at first sharing my concerns with the way the Act was rushed through parliament. However she went on to quotes statistics generated from parties with a vested interest (http://www.metro.co.uk/news/817878-illegal-downloading-cost-1-4bn) in proving that piracy costs jobs and the economy big time. Now, this debate is far too long-winded to go into here, but without a doubt statistics from such sources should be taken with such a large amount of salt it would surely crush you before inducing a heart-attack. That is presuming the thought anyone would ever quote statistics from such sources to begin with hadn't shocked you to death already.
So armed with these statistics she concluded that she would be voting in favour of the Act because "It cannot be right that websites are set up purely to make money by facilitating online piracy".
Of course this sounds reasonable on the face of it, but why should you be the one affording such an incredulous Act being enforced? Media firms place pressure on the government, who places the pressure on your ISP, who raises your bill. http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/3214-is-a-new-broadband-tax-to-fight-piracy-on-the-way
In writing this I discovered another blogger has written up my above points beautifully. If you've bored yourself of my incohrent ramblings and skipped down here, at least read his: http://www.rogerdavies.com/2010/10/acs-law-digital-economy-act/
