The World Wide Web used to be a pretty free and fair place.  Sure it was a little disorganized and a little wild certainly there’s no doubt that there are plenty of unsavory corners of the internet.  But you know, there was a kind of Utopian fairness to the net – the guy sitting in a cyber cafe in Nepal had a near identical experience to a New York Lawyer sitting in a million dollar office.

Slowly censorship and filtering has ebbed away this level playing field.  First it was Governments often headed by dictators who were not keen on their citizens talking and expressing themselves freely.  At least in general the majority of Democratic nations stayed largely away from this.  But this is starting to change of course due to money.

The Protect IP Act is currently being considered by congress and will introduce a uniquely American form of censorship to the internet.  In fact it threatens to be much worse than some tin pot dictator who applies a few technical and easily circumvented restrictions.   The internet is already under threat from the constant spying, logging and surveillance that makes anonymous surfing almost impossible.  The Protect IP Act will hand the media and entertainment industries the chance to decide what external sites are filtered.

Media companies will be able to block access to any web site which they feel violates their copyrights in even the smallest way.  A link to a pirated film, a copy of a current song – running a social networking site or forum is going to be like Russian roulette waiting for a user to post something that gets the site in to trouble.  In reality nobody will bother, the creativity and risk takers who brought us sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter would never have dreamed of starting out in this sort of environment.  They can now defend themselves with huge legal teams, new start ups simply won’t bother.

If you care about the internet and would rather the music and film companies didn’t decide what you can see and do online – protest.