It had to happen sooner or later. The heydey of the wild frontier Internet, where ISPs had unfettered artistic license to create the landscape they wanted, is over. Like Adam and Eve in the proverbial garden of Eden, it was theirs to lose, and lose it they are about to, it seems. Now, as some Internet providers are moving to restrict bandwidth usage and charge outrageous amounts for “over usage” – much like the phone company once did, legislation has been introduced to regulate ISPs, and even to have a Federal agency oversee them – much like the telephone companies now do.

Following in New York’s footsteps, North Carolina is set to enact a similar Amazon Affiliate Tax, by which we mean that sales generated by someone in North Carolina via an affiliate program will be taxed (New York enacted an affiliate sales tax last year, over which New York was promptly sued).

Germany will be voting tomorrow on their proposed Internet censorship law, which would create a list of verboten websites (primarily dealing with the underaged in inappropriate situations) that will be targeted for official German governmental censoring. It was only a few months ago that Australia’s plan to censor websites that it deemed inappropriate or illegal blew up in its face, with the list of censored website being leaked to and widely published on the Internet.

The legislators in the state of Louisiana have approved an across-the-board Internet tax on all users. Any Louisiana resident who has an Internet account will be charged the tax, and ISPs will be required to collect it from them.

A website in Holland – Miljoenhuizen.nl – has been held liable for the summary that Google search turned up for its site. Yes, you read that right – they were held responsible for the fact that Google excerpted and concatenated text from their webpage in a way that suggested that the plaintiff, the BMW dealership Zwartepoorte, had gone bankrupt.

The European Commission has sued the country of Sweden for failing to implement the European Union (EU) Data Retention Directive – a mandate of having in place data retention legislation aimed at codifying how and for how long an ISP must retain user data.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting ready to issue new guidelines which state that bloggers who review a product or service are under an obligation to disclose to their readers if the product or service being reviewed is a sponsor of the blog, or if the blogger otherwise is getting compensation (sometimes known as “Blogola”, as a play on the word “payola) for the review.

It was a Federal judge – Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart – who famously said of pornography, “I know it when I see it,” and this week, forty-five years later, another Federal judge has said of naked pictures of teens being sent by cell phone (also known as ‘sexting’), “this ain’t it.”

Following closely on the heels of the defendant who was acquited because the arresting officer revealed too much on MySpace and Facebook, two different trials are being appealed due to jurors Twittering and Facebooking about the trial, including in one extremely high-profile case.

Forget terrorists using Google maps to find targets; criminals are already way ahead in that game, using Google Earth maps to find their next victims – even stealing the very roofs off buildings that they have found using Google maps!

The BBC is under fire today for a stunt that it pulled a few days ago, in which it rented a Russian bot net (also sometimes called a spam bot), and then sent millions of pieces of spam, and DOSed a corporate server.

Stupid users are the worst problem on the Internet, according to this survey of more than 600 Internet users.

The Internet can be used for all kind of great things, and certainly one of those great things has been the development of the microlending sites – where users contribute a small amount of funds, and then the microlending site extends a small business loan (typically up to a few hundred dollars) to individuals to allow the recipient to get on their feet by starting or furthering a small business. However, one site is funding cock fighting, which is not only a horrible blood sport, but is illegal here in the United States. Perhaps more astonishingly, the CEO of the site, Kiva.org, is justifying the practice!

Gary Waters is one lucky perp. Already on parole for a burglery rap, he was arrested for gun possession, and went to trial. And then, he was acquitted because of comments that the arresting officer Vaughan Ettienne had made on Facebook and MySpace.

Craiglist has been slapped with a lawsuit by the Cook County Sheriff’s Department (Chicago) for being, in essence, the world’s biggest pimp. The lawsuit contends that Craigslist is “the single largest source of prostitution in the nation.”