May I Speak Freely?

The 10th Commandment, found in Exodus 20: 
17 "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's." 

And James chapter 4 warns against what the Bible calls covetousness - defined as:  to wish for earnestly,

to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably, or to feel inordinate desire for what belongs to another.  

 

1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

We're seeing a lot of initials today on the Internet - mainly SOPA and PIPA.   There are some 7000 websites that are, in essence, "blacked out", or not operating today in order to protest these bills...so what's that all about?

They're nearly-identical bills - SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, and it's the House version; PIPA is the "Protect IP Act", and that's the Senate bill.  According to the website Digital Trends, the bills aim "to curb the illegal distribution of copyrighted material by foreign websites, which by definition operate outside the jurisdiction of US law. These bills provide the power and the framework to restrict access to these types of sites."   Opponents believe that, because the wording is ambiguous, "they hold the power to usher in unprecedented censorship online, stifle online innovation, and even “break the Internet” by allowing (or requiring) Internet service providers to tamper with the domain name system (DNS), the underlying architecture of the Internet. Supporters of these bills say all of these concerns are completely unfounded."

Some of the most well known sites participating in the blackout include Wikipedia, Reddit, all 64 Cheezburger Network blogs, Boing Boing, Destructoid, Mozilla, TwitPic, Imgur, MoveOn,org, MineCraft, FreakOutNation and I Heart Chaos, among many others.   Google has a black rectangle covering its name on its site, with a link to an information page about the proposed bills.   Its site says that:

1. SOPA and PIPA would censor the Web

2. SOPA and PIPA would be job-killers because they would create a new era of uncertainty for American business

3. SOPA and PIPA wouldn’t stop piracy

The Internet has become an engine of commerce and a marketplace of ideas - but there does seem to be a desire for control of content - from the FCC's attempt to enact so-called "net neutrality", which was identified on this program as a possible form of government censorship, at least content control, to those that want to tax transactions on the Internet, this has become somewhat of a "holy grail" for some in authority who would like to gain quite a bit more power.   But, as we see in today's blackout, liberals and conservatives alike enjoy the free flow of ideas through the Internet, and as we understand the proper, Biblical role of government, we can see that while we do desire for activities that are morally objectionable, such as pornography and gambling, should be restricted, the broad range of activities do not need government oversight.

But, I believe there are those that covet such regulatory power.   And, that gets down to our spiritual application - what do we covet in our lives?   Are there things that we cannot or should not have, yet in our desire for power, control, or wealth, we become excessively fixated on those matters - even at the expense of our walk with God?   Any tangible or intangible item in our lives upon which we place a higher priority than our relationship with Christ is termed an "idol", and our pursuit becomes a detriment to us.