Over the holiday several events happened that illustrate that we are facing a clear and present danger to the freedom of the Internet.

It started with the US government seizing a bunch of domains that were accused of participating in copyright infringement.   The action and its aftermath illustrate two important points.  First, despite seeking more powers under the awful COICA, the government is already asserting the legality of controlling DNS and seizing domain names.  Second, several of the affected sites rapidly switched to domains not controlled by the US and announced these via Twitter, thus making the effort essentially pointless.  This clearly demonstrates why we should resist the passage of COICA and fight the current practice of domain name seizure: it is ineffective for its stated purpose and a threat to free speech.

Once the industries (tv, music, movies, publishing) that have been lobbying for COICA and seizure realize this ineffectiveness, we need to be prepared for them upping the ante by calling for IP blocking infrastructure, so that sites that are located abroad can be suppressed entirely.  That of course is the equivalent of China’s great firewall.  In the meantime Australia has been heading in this direction.  There law makers have made it illegal to even link to sites on a banned list, which now includes Wikileaks and Australia has plans to build out a firewall around the continent.

Finally, Wikileaks posted the quarter million or so cables it had obtained earlier this year.  Now reasonable people can disagree over whether or not Wikileaks should have posted these and the earlier Iraq war diaries.  Certainly there is a risk to named individuals who may have assisted the United States and who may be identified.  At the same time though it provides a unique window into diplomacy that has mostly failed to provide results.   When Wall Street analysts privately held one view and publicly another it was a cause for great outrage.  It would be nice to see the same happen here.

As a citizen then, I would much rather live in a world where government cannot easily control which web sites I can go to.  This brings me back to the idea of an Internet Bill of Rights, which would update and expand the existing bill of rights to encompass speech on the Internet.   It should ensure that citizens can access all sites from abroad and that sites within the US can only be shut down with full due process.