The Internet is one of the very few places where we are free to interact and do as we please. I get real uncomfortable real quick every time I hear how government or business want to regulate and change it. (oh, it always seems to be ‘for our own good’, of course) Here is an excerpt of a response from a group of people who actually understand how the Internet works to one of the most recent attempts:
An Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network, and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish.
The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry. To date, the leading role the US has played in this infrastructure has been fairly uncontroversial because America is seen as a trustworthy arbiter and a neutral bastion of free expression. If the US begins to use its central position in the network for censorship that advances its political and economic agenda, the consequences will be far-reaching and destructive.
