Many consumers have enjoyed the benefits of being able to shop online with sellers such as Amazon and eBay with excellent savings and avoid high sales tax amount that would be incurred in regular brick and mortar retail stores companies. States have been complaining about millions of dollars in lost revenue stream from those sales taxes being lost.

We don't tend to get overly political here at Tekgoblin for the obvious reason that we aren't into Politics, however there is something very important going on that may very well change the way we look at our Anonymity (or lack there of) on the internet.

Warning! The following post contains news of a political nature! SOPA, the short form of the proposed United States bill "Stop Online Piracy Act" has had a notable amount of opposition from everywhere and anywhere. The bill aims to protect items under intellectual copyright, but goes as far to allow the Department of Justice to file court orders against websites and organisations seen to facilitate any form of Copyright Infringement. As a response to the bill, Wikipedia, Reddit, and blogging sites such as those made by WordPress, ICanHazCheezburger, BoingBoing and a few others are blacking out in a few hours for 24 hours. (12 hours for Reddit)

Verizon has filed an appeal against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s recent net neutrality rules that will take effect on November 20th of this year. Verizon has attempted to block the rules before, which was tossed out of court by the US Court of Appeals due to a technicality, but Verizon is back at it again.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been amended and now allows users to jailbreak their iPhones. This is a great win for consumers, now Apple or other phone manufacturers cannot sue you for jailbreaking or rooting your device. Check out the excerpt below:

(2) Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

Now if you noticed above it mentions that the software has to be 'lawfully obtained' so that still doesn't mean that you can install cracked or stolen applications legally. The changes also allow you to unlock your phone and change carriers if you want, the manufacturer cannot stop you from doing so.