Today, a groundswell of Internet users became activists as the threat of censorship and government regulation quivered in the shaky paws of ill educated legislators. The blogosphere, tweets, Facebook Shares and Google +1s were all over the story. Fortunately, the Office of the President recognized the obvious mounting outrage and voiced their lack of support for such measures, which extinguished the torches of the Senate Committee, leaving them standing around with just their pitchforks.

There has been a lot of discussion going around lately about Google and Facebook cracking down on pseudonyms and requiring their users to work under their real names. Big Brother/Company paranoia aside, I have come out on their side of this issue. That is actually a little shocking for those who know my position on network privacy. Maybe I should explain.

I admit, there are just a few things that crawl all over me. Insurance and Patents are two of them. While I would love to go into a longwinded diatribe about the evils of insurance, I have some thoughts on patent policy that I just need to put out there. I am absolutely all for corporate and individual innovations, and I firmly believe that any original innovation needs to be protected from rip-off artists and scammers. The people and products on the bleeding edge of innovation are bastards when it comes to pirating and intellectual property theft.

I have been watching the recent publicity stunts by the likes of Anonymous and Lulzsec. Publishing usernames and passwords, credit card numbers, and email addresses from some of the biggest names in technology. Entertainment companies, military contractors, banks. You would think the victims would know better, but I think the reality of the perpetrators advanced techniques and net stealth has shaken them to the core. This is digital terrorism, plain and simple.