In March 1989, Timothy Berners-Lee wrote his original proposal for an information management system that would link the then fledgling Internet together in an understandable, organized way. This system would become known as the World Wide Web.

The most interesting part of this story, however, is that Berners-Lee didn’t copyright his system, because he believed the Internet should be free for everyone.

Still, in America today, there’s a constant push against the idea of a free Internet.

Recently, journalist Barrett Brown was sentenced to five years in prison for analyzing and reporting on hacked information taken from Stratfor Security during a hack in 2012.

This sets a terrifying precedent for the future of both journalism and the Internet, as Brown was essentially charged for simply linking to hacked material. Under this precedent, many journalists could be charged for linking to emails from the Sony Pictures hack, and be sentenced to five years in prison for sharing information that was already available.

But the bad news didn’t stop there.

Just before Brown’s sentencing, President Barack Obama proposed alterations to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, first implemented in 1984 that don’t seek to make the law more applicable to the modern Internet, as much as they seek to widen the law’s scope and increase the maximum sentence for violating the law.

The new proposals could make it a federal crime to share passwords with friends and family.

The Internet is a place meant for the free exchange of ideas — that’s what makes the Internet special. There is no entry level for information that can be exchanged. However, it seems that we are increasingly willing to destroy this in the name of safety. The Internet has its dark crevices filled with criminal activity, but in trying to stomp out these portions of the Internet, we only succeed in damaging it as a whole.

The Internet is an important place where the free exchange of ideas can occur. It is the one place where no country has domain, and where we as a global community can share ideas and build towards a better future for all of us. And we need to fight to keep it that way.

Alex Bertsch is the opinion editor of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].