Here’s more possible government over-reach. Lobbyists for the Hollywood industry have pushed for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would allow them to get ISPs to shut down any and all suspected sites that support piracy.
The way it is worded, if a person on a share site tried to illegally distribute or sell intellectual property, the whole site could be shut down. It doesn’t matter if thousands of others on the site were just sharing baby pictures, all would lose access. There are no ‘due process’ nor ‘freedom of speech’ exceptions, etc.
Keep an eye on SOPA. If it starts to get legs in Congress, we’ll all need to call our elected officials and hope they still represent us and not Hollywood.
And this is another reason why federal government should only be there to protect our basic freedoms, and not the desires of lobbyists and big corporations.
As it is, there already are protections for the industries. They should take the individuals to court, and have the courts order the shut down of only the law breaker, not everyone.