These internet regulators should just use the child porn excuse for everything. That wins every time. Even the most open internet activists won't ask any questions, they will just be like, "well, if it's to stop child porn, then I guess it's okay."

People keep talking about workarounds and the like.

Yes the technology is there, encryption which isn't viable to crack, overseas servers offering up IP addresses not linked to you, VPN's and all that.

The problem is that all these can be defeated, and easily, because the government can just make laws to get around them.

Encrypt you're traffic... Make a law saying you can't use encryption... If that is going to far, just make a law that everybody has to hand over the keys o. Demand by the court (not sure about us, but so e countries already have it). Say they have no right to demand my keys, nope, easy, even without deep-packet I section, you can still monitor traffic shapes to come up with enough probable course to request keys, and if you refuse, you are in contempt of court, which would probably cost more tha. Than the copyright infringements.

Nope, if the government really wanted to stop it, they could, it's just they'd take a lot of flack, so it won't happen unless the copyright lobbiets come up with a big enough bribe to cover the flack... Or the US demands it in return for free trade etc.

so the technologists predicts that the future internet will be censored by governments like the great fire wall of china. that is a horrible thought. the entire success of the internet is based on the fact that its a computer network the allows the free and open exchange of information. i bet you this guy has no real understanding of technology but he owns a mac and writes a blog and thinks hes a tech god. pfft off.

fyi we have this sort of filter hardware at work and its really easy to get around it.

The details of any person commenting against total corporate censorship of the internet will be filtered out by laws made by Johnny 'The Smiling Assassin' Key and forwarded to the appropriate authorities.

You have been warned.

All Hail The CEO! Earthcorp forever! Freedom is Slavery! Yeah!

We've already had laws drafted by the Labour government on behalf of the US media corporations. (Clare Curran even wants to investigate charging all internet users a levy, which is given to the NZ recording industry.)

Now we're staging immense raids with helicopters and shutting down websites because the US government tells us to, despite no evidence of guilt.

The MPAA and RIAA want to destroy the internet. I like the internet much more than I like the songs the manufacture. If I had to chose a world without Six60 and Annabel Fay, than a world without YouTube, Wikipedia, and the billions of sites on the internet.

rampant free speech and other "net nasties" replaced with corporations and governments ability to filter your media further

This is a terrible idea. Hes a banker not a technologist.

"world's largest copyright owners and media partners, may just have sufficient reason to be excited by the new world order in which the wild west days of the internet's early beginnings are nearing their end."

Yes, no doubt. The internet has been a giant thorn in the foot for these groups who have held onto control for so long. I'm not talking about piracy, but how the internet and user generated content has to some degree made them irrelevant.

Suddenly people are free of tv, radio, newspapers, magazines and their respective media conglomerates. Free to seek out or produce content themselves and promote/discuss it among themselves.

Now, we can't have that now can we.

Can we agree never to publish this guy anywhere again?

Everything for free on the internet, as it was and always will be. If you want to force control or cost on to people why don't you go away and make your own internet - don't try to hijak ours !!!