The Internet Could Become as Regulated as TV

“It’s not the level playing field that we once thought it would be,” Jennifer Granick lamented. She was talking about the internet, and how it is slowly shifting away from being the bastion of free speech, invention, and information, at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas. She fears that the web will become regulated into oblivion, much the same way as US network television.

“It’s going to be this slick, stiff, controlled, closed thing,” Granick, a lawyer and director of civil liberties at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University, said during her keynote speech in front of 10,000 security researchers in Vegas yesterday. She fears that laws such as Europe’s Right to be Forgotten could cripple the internet’s transparency, especially if the legislation becomes extraterritorial, as France is advocating.

“We’re losing the freedom to tinker,” she complained. “The message is clear—you need permission to operate in their world. If you step over the line, we’ll come for you.” To combat the creeping problem, Granick encouraged hackers and coders to keep jabbing at the establishment, and building decentralised internet systems, to keep ultimate control of the web out of the hands of “The Man”. Failing that, “we need to smash it apart and make something new and better,” she postured.

Thank you USA Today for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of LiveScience.