It seems now as though we lack proper definitions and categorization of the media we engage in (there being so much) , which results in undistinguished policies which seem to be applied to mass communication mediums as well as telecommunications--which seem to have become increasingly similar. As Freedman puts it in his book The Politics of Media Policy, it used to be that mass communication applied to broadcast, print and radio and there were therefore certain policies and restrictions concerning content ownership and censorship. Copyright laws were strict in order to protect intellectual property, while with telecoms (medium used for 2 people to communicate with one another, usually asynchronous), had their own regulations and policies.
Now that the lines are blurred between what is private use and public use, the communication between a certain group of individuals easily becomes mass communication. Siva Vaidhyanathan describes the web a few years back saying “the web was exciting and democratic-almost to the point of anarchy, in his book The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry.) This is no longer the case. Vaidhyanathan also points out “the mythology of the web leads us to assume that it is a wild, ungovernable, and thus ungoverned realm. This could not be further from the truth.” And with this assumption, we behave online as if there were no consequences.
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