The Day Free Speech obsoleted Preventative Copyright Enforcement

I said before that I thought Net Neutrality was a red herring in the fight for digital freedom—on further reflection I can see this was a gross understatement. If codified into law, the goal of net neutrality spells the end of censorship, and along with it any chance of so-called preventative copyright enforcement.

If ISP's are not free to prioritize one kind of traffic over another, then they are effectively prevented from policing their own networks. It's no longer an issue of who watches the watchers; if the actions of those with the keys to the kingdom are stunted through legal means, then there can be no watchers.

Fair use laws provide exceptions for educational use as well as parody and derivative works. If you designed an alternate ending for Beetlejuice and published the whole movie online with the alternate ending attached, there is an argument for a derivative work or parody. The ending is pretty fruity in the first place, but bear with me.

Pretend

What does this mean for the Motion Picture industry? Though the timeline is continuous, recent government codes have expressed that we are in the midst of a digital millennium, a time of discrete events, some with causes and some with effects, and that the culprits will be held responsible. We are no boondock saints here.