Although everyone who works or plays on the Internet concedes that piracy is a growing problem that won’t go away without somekind of intervention, the White House has said they won’t back a new bill to combat the issue if it involves any kind of censorship.

That in itself is a good thing and even more surprising considering that some of the heavyweights looking for help from the government like the movie and music industries were petitioning to have the legislative changes made. The stance by the government is the latest salvo between the content creators and Internet firms that has been going on in Congress.

No doubt there’s a fair amount of lobbying going on from either side. A blog post from the U.S. chief technology officer stated in part that while online piracy was a serious threat that demanded a legislative response, the government would not be party to anything that  compromised freedom of expression. Read between the lines here and you’ll see a veiled admission by the feds that ecommerce needs to play an important role in any economic recovery. In short, even the government knows that we can’t do anything to stifle the economy created by the Internet.

Here’s one in the ‘saw this coming file.’ It seems that the censorship serpent is rearing it’s ugly head in India after some private user on Facebook held a competition calling for drawing of the Prophet Mohammed to be posted there. Vinay Rai, a journalist, brought the complaint to the Indian courts charging that 21 web companies that included Google were responsible for posting images that were offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians. The Indian government, in turn, has sanctioned the prosecution of those 21 companies.

This isn’t really about religion or concerns over Western decadence or Muslim fanaticism. It all comes down to respect. This is the Internet and people need to realize that with this game changing technology comes new rules for how we all deal with each other on almost a daily basis. New technology has the landscape shift constantly, but the old adage about staying away from religion and politics as topics for social discourse applies.

We need to respect other people’s beliefs and their customs. Whether we agree with them or not is hardly at issue here. Drawings of the Prophet Mohammed have always been an incendiary act that should be avoided out of respect to the people being offended. Censoring Google and Facebook isn’t the answer either. That’s only adding fuel to the fires started by people who enjoy this kind of attention.