IMO this whole thing has a dual purpose, one much more sinister than the other.
In the open, it is only about monopolizing control over copyrighted material, but behind the scenes, it's about controling the content that is flowing through the internet, an dthat is the grand prize.
The threat the internet posses to the ruling establishment is very high, because for the first time in history the ability to mass disseminate information is no longer in the hands of a few corporate entities which could be easily controled.
What is happening is a free for all revolution, where ordinary people for the first time ever can see alternate points of view and speak openly about a wide range of topics (such as this one). People can get organized and informed many times more easily than ever before, which means those who have access to the internet will be much more difficult to control than those who do not.
That to me is the reason why the high courts will continue make totally unacceptable rulings in an effort to restrict access to the internet.
If my prediction is correct, then we should see plenty of rulings which limit what is published on the internet as opposed to what is viewed. The reason why publishing must be restricted but not vieweing, is because the ruling establishment will want to make use of the internet as a means of pushing its own adgenda, so they will want as many viewers as possible. What they will try and restrict at all costs is content publishing, especially anonymous publishing on P2P networks. As we've seen with bitorrent websites, it is easy to shut them down because it is easy to determine who runs the website and what ISP is in use, so traditional websites are not so much of a threat. P2P networks are another matter, since with proper encryption and anonymization there's nothing to identify. .
Ultimately, as the P2P networks are driven underground (see
Freenet,
Entropy,
Tor and
I2P) they will attack the ISP's and legislate laws which make using a P2P network illegal altogether.
Well, that was my attempt at impersonating Nostradamus anyway
