Protecting Your Privacy: A Digital Bill of Rights
With the digital age going strong and a new administration in the White House, now is the perfect time to enact legislation and regulations concerning the Internet. TechCrunch recently published (courtesy of the Washington Post) an article outlining a Digital Bill of Rights to protect Internet users and consumers. Most of the laws that govern the Internet are in need of a major overhaul due to all the advances in technology. Basically they need to keep up with the changes. If laws weren’t changed concerning the United States Postal Service, we’d all still be waiting for our mail to be delivered on horseback. Imagine what it would be like if those old laws were still being used even with our modern delivery service. Mail service would be unreliable, chaotic and ineffective. The same situation we face digitally today.
It’s difficult to control issues concerning digital privacy, copyright infringement and net neutrality because they are creations of today’s technology. It’s time to sit down and write new laws that can control quickly developing technology and how it is being used. There are very few laws that protect a person’s Internet privacy. Companies are allowed to track our movements online, keep and store records about us and sell this information to the highest bidder. A step in the right direction would be to create a Digital Bill of Rights to protect consumers from marketing companies, manufacturers, Internet Service Providers as well as the government itself.
Our government representatives would be wise to take a look at TechCrunch’s article and Digital Bill of Rights. It would be an excellent template and jump-off point to getting out legislation we sorely need in the digital world.
