But not like this.
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and many others are all similar attempts to regulate the internet in favor of various copyright holders. In the US, at least, the sponsors of these bills tend to be heavily influenced by the RIAA, MPAA. These parties are the only ones that seem to be positively affected by the bills.
If we're going to regulate the internet, why must it be copyright, copyright, copyright? Governments can and should have loftier goals than that. I'm not a poli-sci guy, so bear with me here, but I think the goal of government should be to protect the interests of society over the interests of individuals.
Thus, I present a new target for regulation: advertisement. You may have read about why the internet made one man sad today. That article sparked this thought, but I think it's been in the back of my head for awhile now.
We've all heard complaints about how, for the past decade or so, some of the world's brightest minds are being put to use figuring out how to advertise. The worst part of this is that they're putting all of that intelligence towards distracting anyone who uses the internet. And it's becoming clear that they're winning. Maybe it's time they hit a speed bump. While a drop-off in advertisement would subtract from the revenue of many web-based companies, it may remain in the interest of society to keep people focused on whatever it is they were trying to do before playing that flash game.
We've also all heard about the problems with the present youth's short attention span and inability to concentrate. I, for one, can't count the number of times I've spent an hour on Reddit/Hacker News when all I wanted was to download an article for class. I suspect that rampant advertisement (online and elsewhere) is a big cause of this situation. I hope that there's something we can do about it.
I'm not saying that I have any idea how regulation of online advertisement would work, but I think it's a conversation that's worth starting.
