End of Wild Wild West (Score 1)

I'm not sure who the collective "we" is, but sure, most of these laws will end the 'net's reign as a sort of lawless, or maybe more accurately self-policed, wild-wild west. But anyone who didn't think this would happen was being naive. There's too much money involved. And to those people that think these are issues that only affect the USA, you're being naive as well. With the global economy becoming more and more important, the US has enough power to force nearly every country that wants to do business with us to respect certain laws of ours. We're the schoolyard bullies, and if you don't follow our rules, we'll kick you out of the sandbox. Ultimately, no amount of legislation can impede individual thoughts; however, it can affect how you share or present them. It's effectively forced every Internet page to follow the rules of journalism and think about issues of libel and being held accountable for your own actions. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. Freedom of speech has never meant a freedom to say whatever you want; there have always been limitations. As for some of the issues, I'm not entirely up to speed on all of them, but as someone that creates intellectual property, I have a somewhat difficult time with programs like Napster. If I create something that I feel people might want to purchase, I'd hate to think anyone can just pass it around. As an example, if you own a website that depends on ad revenue for income, would you be happy with a software program that allowed people to share their favorite website pages with people, depriving you of the ad views?

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