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My Problem with the internet
Long ago I was told about the internet. Now the exact nature of this conversation has escaped me, but what I can clearly remember is that it promised me something all together new and wonderful: Freedom.
Freedom, however, is a tricky word. It can have many means and most troublesome these meanings can be personal. What I am getting at is that not everyone defines freedom the say way. The prefect example of this is my overwhelming desire to hit people when they say or do something incredibly stupid. Now to me, freedom means that I have a right to act upon this impulse. Others will contest this and say that people have a right to say what they want and the right to an existence without my fist in their face. Turning back to the point, despite it being this indefinable mass we can all agree that freedom is a good thing. This is why I loved what the internet was suppose to be. Yet somewhere along the way it has all gone wrong.
In recent months my internet provider seems to think that I am no longer allowed to do whatever I want with my internet connection, mainly they have prevented me from downloading using torrents and other peer to peer programs. I admit that this seems like a very small problem at its start but it offends in two ways. First, I am a paying customer. I don’t see how it is fair for them to tell me what I can and cannot do with the service I am paying for. Second, this is just masking a larger issue. The internet is suppose to be place of freedom. I should be able to use it as I want. I hate to break it out but this seems like the prefect place to apply the classic “slippery slope” argument. They are stopping us from using these programs now but who is to say that they don’t plan on censoring the internet by blocking our access to certain sites in the future.
I don’t know, maybe I am making a bigger issue out of this than I should be. It just somehow seems so very wrong to me.
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Have a day
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