Originally Posted by The Batlord

Not that I have any desire for corporations to have free reign to control the internet (de facto Google tyranny anyone?), but I also wonder if this isn't the first step (or second or third or whatever) toward government slowly exerting its own control over the net. I'm a great believer in the internet as a wild west kind of place, a repository of all the world's information where it can be spread freely to all, even if that means that child predators and scam artists have an easier time of it -- just an unfortunate but necessary trade off IMO.

But I just can't see the government remaining neutral over internet freedom in the long run. Every time there's a hacking incident, or a pretty little white girl gets molested by a guy she met on the internet, I imagine there's an invisible noose that's going to get tighter and tighter. I don't necessarily see it as gov clandestinely trying to shut down free expression on the internet, but if you allow them any kind of power over it, eventually they're going to pass some kind of restriction that's never going to be lifted, and so on and so on until I can't even watch a thirty second clip from a movie on Youtube without getting sued.