> I think that now that the internet is mature as it is, some limits are necessary to keep things fair and protect people from the mob, and the internet will live on nonetheless.
The problem is, if you have a different internet in the US than you do in Europe, China and Saudi Arabia then it isn't the internet anymore. There is no way to do that and still allow people in Europe to communicate with people in the US -- otherwise they could just forward each other the censored information (and set up automated systems to do the same).
The more you censor the more popular the countermeasures become until either everyone is using them and the censorship is completely ineffective, or we're all living in the sort of communist police state necessary to prevent that.
And there is no point in engaging in censorship that is completely ineffective, so what you're really proposing is the police state.
The "temporary" part seems to have disappeared, at least in the USA. Very, very little material enters the public domain every year. The rules about copyright (instant when fixed in tangible form, long lasting, can last for years after an author's death) make it almost impossible to tell based on the material itself, whether that material is copyright. I have to conclude that today's US copyright is an imposition by authorities, albeit a subtle one.
I, along with most commentators it seems, consider the shift to give rights to authors (over a private, closed, cabal of printers) in the Statute of Anne to be the shift to copyright of a form recognisable today.
The Licensing Act you refer to was a censorship law, not a copyright law; it IIRC doesn't protect authors rights nor give them primacy as the creators of [copyright] works.
But copyright is a social contract. It needs people to believe in it far more than it needs people to be forced to follow it at gunpoint.
Aggressive copyright enforcement is counterproductive because it trades a small increase in the cost of defecting for a large increase in public disrespect for the social contract which is what causes people to be willing to defect.
I'd rather the laws of a country which enshrines freedom of speech to a greater degree than any other be the set of rules governing the internet than the laws of a place where you can be fined for jokingly giving a Nazi salute.
The problem is, if you have a different internet in the US than you do in Europe, China and Saudi Arabia then it isn't the internet anymore. There is no way to do that and still allow people in Europe to communicate with people in the US -- otherwise they could just forward each other the censored information (and set up automated systems to do the same).
The more you censor the more popular the countermeasures become until either everyone is using them and the censorship is completely ineffective, or we're all living in the sort of communist police state necessary to prevent that.
And there is no point in engaging in censorship that is completely ineffective, so what you're really proposing is the police state.