Previous periods of overbearing law enforcement in the face of rapidly changing technology imho had a lot to do with the flourishing of open source and the multiplication and widespread adoption of federated protocols. Subsequent changes in the political environment (not least the collapse of Soviet-style communism and the end of the Cold War) led to a moderately happy marriage between convenience and consumerism in which the web flourished and provided wins for both consumers and capitalists.

I feel the emerging need now is for lean protocols and tools that allow us to effectively filter unwanted content and to view and manipulate metadata structures, both inherent and emergent. If you're looking for inspiration in places other than the commercial sphere, much interesting work on digital ontologies has been emerging from the EU in recent years.