Why America isn’t the bad guy on the Internet
The grass isn't always greener on the other side.
If you use the internet for leisure, do business on the internet for profit, or count on the internet to spread your message, you are at a disadvantage if you are not doing so in America.
There, I said it.
That wasn’t meant as a slight to our friends and colleagues abroad. I don’t mean this as an attack on any one country or continent. Rather, I’m simply challenging the assertion that the United States is somehow the bad guy when it comes to freedom of speech on the web. I read countless stories that argue that sites that are critical of the government, large corporations, industries, political figures, etc., should host offshore in Canada or Europe because their sites are simply unsafe in the U.S.
This is little more than classic FUD.
Among bloggers, particularly in the tech world, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is loathed for its supposed coziness with the recording industry and the MPAA, among other content organizations. As a consumer, and as a geek, I personally share a lot of the same concerns and frustrations other users do when it comes to the principles of fair use. Believe me when I say I find DRM as annoying and intrusive as everybody else does. I also can see plainly that the “anti-circumvention” aspects of the DMCA are genuinely bad for consumers.
But the bigger picture here is that significant portions of this law, particularly Article II as it pertains to our industry, are actually well written. The DMCA isn’t perfect, it does a lot of annoying things but it also does a lot to protect the rights of ISP’s, online services, publishers, and users alike.
More after the jump.
