Once upon a time

Long ago, on this planet, a person could walk from China to the British Isle crossing only rivers and mountains. Borders are lines in our imagination. Lines, that people die to maintain every day. It was not until people in charge decided to prevent people from freely moving from one place to another that we had things like passports. For the last thirty or so years, we have had that kind of freedom in cyberspace. Here come the tolls and passports.

I'm getting whiffs of countries, companies and news organizations that want to make sure their content is only available to the people they want it to be available for. That is, paying customers and people who have the 'right' to it. The UK already prevents any one from using their online TV pages who is not in the country. Every page has a digital signature that guarantees their content is from the correct server to the correct recipient. These certificates go both ways. That same mechanism allows different content to go to people who are in different places depending on what your digital rights are. The day is not far off where we will all need digital passports to view pages from other countries. You think I'm kidding or exadurating? Wait and see. It is what people in a position of power want and they always get what they want.

The days of a free internet are coming to an end.