Amendment 28: The Right To Be Found?

Most U.S. citizens are familiar with the amendments of the constitution (at least I hope so). Folks talk about the first and second amendment all the time. In fact, the 2nd amendment was a big part of presidential election that we just had. But nobody would argue that the constitution of the United States was made when nobody is even dreaming of having a digital age like we have now. That’s why there have been small changes here and there in the past to bring it up to date. Will the Google age bring yet another change to the constitution?

I don’t know if we will get away with an amendment for this, but I think we are going to get to a certain point in this digital age that being found by search engines will be as essential as having the right to freedom of speech. We are not there yet, but wouldn’t it be unfair if you put up a site and search engines for some reason refused to pick it up? Of course, if you are a black-hat and you pull a nasty trick, then you will lose your right, but I personally don’t believe we have enough in the constitution to protect us citizens in this modern age.

Just like having the right to own a gun is a right in this country, I believe having access to the Internet and being represented on it through a website should also be a right. Now to be fair, we really don’t have too many laws about this whole thing. Nobody forbids you from owning a site or getting your own domain. But at the same time, search engines don’t really have to index your site.

If you are a logical person, you probably agree with me that we won’t really get that far with whole amendment thing maybe in 50 years. I sure do hope that Mr. Obama will keep the regulation on the Internet to the minimum, but if and when we get to a point where the Internet is heavily regulated, I believe there should be regulations in place to protect us consumers against abuse. Is that too much to ask?