It's an intellectual freedom that has no precedent throughout history. If you walked into a library in the 1950s and thumbed through a book about communism, you were probably put on a list. If you walked into a privately owned book store, the owners had a right to gossip and tell others what you purchased, and I'm sure many people unfortunately made use of that liberty. This isn't new.
There are many amazing new possibilities brought about because of the Internet. Just because Stalin (and the FBI) tracked your library habits doesn’t mean we should squash out useful functionality.
