Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
You are dreaming.
The "lack of restrictions" you speak of is a purely a "lack of enforcement". Kinda like some of the Southern U.S. states where oral sex is forbidden, or the woman can't be on top of the man. The fact is, these laws exist, and unfortunately they don't become null and void because nobody respects them (or a large number of the population, anyway.) They can and will be used against you if "someone" decides so. Sadly, I can still report you to the MPAA for having and using DVDDecrypter, AnyDVD and DVD Shrink... and they CAN, presumably, urge authorities to fine or jail you. 321 Studios, with their DVDxCopy were closed down not too long ago. All the software that allows for the bypass of such copy encryption remains illegal and can be onbly hosted outside U.S. servers. Or how about the Russian guy arrested in the U.S for bypassing the PDF encryptions? How about university professors not being able to publish works which dissect copy encryption procedures? These are not THAT old.
And no, SO FAR there haven't been any attempts by the U.S. authorities to "censor content on the www" per se. But it's more insidious than that. I remember a group of VERY powerful U.S. lawyers trying to COMPLETELY curtail the sale of wine over the internet - all over the world, presumably - because they were worried that underage children in the U.S. might order some wine and have it delivered to their family home, where they could imbibe happily. That was in 1999. A failure, yes, but the danger always remains, and if the U.S. fights to keep control of the Web, it's not for altruistic reasons - with your country's steady decline into religious paranoia, ugly things can be lurking ahead. Fat lot of good will it do you that you can say whatever you want on the internet ("free expression", yes?) - if you can't do anything.
And if the internet is such a free & unregulated place, without danger stemming from the part of the government (ANY government), why did people with more foresight and backbone that anyone on this board create the EFF ?