Filter This! - Conclusion
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There was a time when the Stratton Oakmont Supreme Court decision pretty much precluded all ISPs from any type of content monitoring. But over the past two years, these net neutrality issues have exploded onto the scene. It's only a matter of time before the courts start getting involved yet again and the calls for net neutrality legislation grow louder.
For now, one positive development has come from the Ask.com search engine. They have come out with a new feature, called AskEraser, that deletes your search activity, including IP addresses, user IDs, session IDs, and the text of the queries from their servers. One default, however, is that this feature does nothing to prevent Ask.com from allowing third parties to collect and store data on users' Internet activity. Also, they will continue to store data when they are required by law to do so.
Because of the minimal privacy protection, some people see this as merely a PR strategy for Ask.com. Even Google benefits from a recent deal that allows them to gain access to some of Ask.com's search data. It's almost as if more data is being publicized than is being deleted.
To sum up, what started as a social movement to protect children from obscene material has now ballooned into a seemingly endless debate about privacy rights and corporate control. On the one hand, you have website owners who want to keep their products protected from any type of third party influence, a primary feature of a strong free market economy. On the other hand, there are corporate giants, who control the ISPs and MPAA, who will sacrifice consumer satisfaction for greater product control. And this behavior, while fundamental to capitalism, chips away at the core values of democracy and freedom itself.
Is there a good guy or bad guy in this fight? Whose side are you on? I hope this article has given you some perspective on the issue. Because once you take an objective look, it becomes much harder to choose.
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