{"id":916,"date":"2011-06-01T09:43:41","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T13:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/?p=916"},"modified":"2011-06-01T09:43:41","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T13:43:41","slug":"the-internet-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iamdann.com\/2011\/06\/01\/the-internet-crisis","title":{"rendered":"The Internet Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is obvious that the government is out of touch with current technology. Governments are frantically passing net neutrality bills<\/a> and overly strict cookie regulations<\/a> while seizing domains without warrants<\/a> and attempting to censor search engine results<\/a>. The government is going about things all wrong. If we’ve learned anything from the RIAA’s struggle against music piracy, it is that companies and governments need to work with <\/em>current trends rather than fighting against them. This seems obvious to everyone except the government officials proposing these bills.<\/p>\n

But, on the other hand, what happens when internet companies become more powerful than the government? In an interview with The Guardian<\/a>, Eric Schmidt says that if the United States passes a law that would require search engines to remove select search results, they would refuse.<\/p>\n

There are two things to this story that should shock you (and I’m not usually one for scare tactics). The first would be the US Government proposing a bill enforcing straight up censorship. The second terrifying aspect is that Google can simply refuse to cooperate with any bill deemed unfair without any real ramifications. When you really think about it, what can our government do do a company like Google?<\/p>\n

So, what would happen if Google turned evil? Let’s not forget the big scare<\/a> where everyone was reporting that Google was teaming up with Verizon to censor your internet. While this wasn’t actually the case, Google, like any company, does<\/em> have the potential for evil and we must not forget it.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0desperately\u00a0need a regulation board to help monitor the internet giants while still promoting openness and internet freedom. Unfortunately, this appears to be impossible at this time for a number of reasons:<\/p>\n