Additionally TechDirt is running a pole: Which Internet Concern Worries You The Most? In responding to that pole (July 2007) I wrote: “The poll results are interesting in that the responders do not appear to reacting to concerns that actually would “hurt” them. For example, the number one response (at least for now) is government spying. In theory, this is being done to protect society and if one is not doing anything illegal – it should be of no consequence. (Privacy today is virtually non-existent, every time we go in a public place we are now recorded.)

However, the question “DRM restrictions get more draconian” raises the issue that laws are being passed that take away a consumers rights, criminalize behaviors, and aggrandizes the “rights” of the product producers. The fact that laws are being passed that deprive me of rights and criminalize certain behaviors is much more of a concern than some obscure bored bureaucrat watching me. With the way DRM is going, I could find myself in jail for buying the wrong ink for my printer.”

My concern with Singleton’s posts actually goes deeper than government versus corporate spying. In her post she raises the issue of an “enforcement problem”. This phrase is suitably ambiguous as to what it really means. But based on the concept that corporations have a “right” to protect their so-called property, the logical implication, in the extreme sense, is that corporations should be given the right to “arrest”, “judge”, and “fine” whoever the corporations anoint as an intellectual property thief. No due process.

As I am writing this, I peeked at TechDirt again looking for an article that I had previously read a while back on how consumers were losing their rights. TechDirt has two new posts. One “MLB’s Latest Efforts To Screw Fans: All That Content You Bought? Gone, Thanks To DRM Change” and “Using The DMCA And DRM To Prevent Innovation” Well, I’ve gone on long enough.

Corporate tracking is less concerning to most of us than government tracking because corporations do not have the monopoly on force that governments have. Corporations can inconvenience people and do some bad things, but governments can lock you up and throw away the key, so I think most of us prioritize concerns with government power.

In either situation, we are loosing “privacy” and we are being subjected to ever greater “surveillance”. So from my point of view, both government and private industry are essentially doing the same thing; yet government surveillance tends to be viewed as “wrong” while corporate surveillance tends to be viewed by some as “acceptable”.