The United States Congress wants to change the free nature of the Internet. A free, open Internet allows communication. That communication can be used for great good, or for evil. It is no different than when the printing press became available. The written word enabled the masses to communicate, and that was a threat to despotic leaders, who fought back by limiting those who would speak on dangerous subjects in public. Jail time. Founding Fathers. Free Speech, a concept so important that it is the United States First Amendment.
Now the United States Congress seeks to constrain Free Speech on the Internet. They seek a requirement to restrict use of encryption, the right to spy on all communications, back doors into systems. Is your camera on? No?
Also threatening the Internet is Big Media. The fear of losing control of License and Copyright is driving Big Media to lobby Congress with Big Money in order to get bills that cripple peer-to-peer networks, filesharing and other means of information exchange. To compormise Free Speech in order to ensure the profits of Big Media. While they have a right to profits, that right does not trump the rights of people to communicate freely.
Other threats exist. Organization that exist solely to collect information on people, to track their locations, their posts, their pcitures, their friends, their political beliefs. Some of these companies collect the information and provide it to the government for free, as a work-around to limits on what information the government can collect. The government cannot overtly spy on you, but a private citizen can, and if a private citizen spies on us through the Internet and gives that information to the government, then no laws are broken.
Big Data is the technology that allows analysts to quickly spot trends and isolate your sensitive information amongs the terabytes of information collected daily.
All these factors threaten a free Internet, either by removing the freedom, or turning it against itself. Think globally, act locally. Be aware of bills such as HR1981, CISPA, SOPA and the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Search for the "Electronic Frontier Foundation", information is power, don't let Congress take that powoer away from you.
It's a shame that the government feels that it needs to resort to tactics like this for the sole purpose of shutting down piracy. Things like SOPA keep popping up all over the place and it gets very cumbersome on the community of the internet as a whole. Even the ones not bound by U.S. laws and regulations. I haven't kept too much track of the new internet regulation acts that keep getting thrown around because I feel comfortable enough in knowing that they will more than likely never be passed as SOPA wasn't when it was a big deal.
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