It's unfortunate that Internet regulation worldwide tends to be in the hands of people who know very little about the Internet and altogether too much about regulation. At the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, hackers have come up with a new idea: their very own space-based Internet service.

Watch out, Verizon just flipped a major privacy switch and it's not exactly anything to smile about. According to its new policy, Verizon will use data it collects to improve marketing reports and to provide more relevant ads to its customers. This is going to upset a lot of people.

The music, movie, and newspaper industries have all stumbled under the weight of digital democratization, but in due time every institution we hold dear will be minced into unrecognizable puddles of archaic nostalgia goo. It's just a matter of when, not if. To that end, the global hive mind seems to already have its sights set on its next victim: filthy filthy lucre. In the not too distant future, one online enterprise aims to transform the entrenched concept of a "bank" into adorable grandpa babble. Two-year old virtual currency service BitCoin gives individuals the ability to remain anonymous with their financial transactions, thus sidestepping centralized authority (and regulation) altogether and upping the anarchic ante considerably. Following increased notoriety, the system is beginning to show some structural faults such as when hackers recently attacked a popular venue for exchanging bitcoins, thus plummeting their value dramatically (see more inside). However, if BitCoin is able to shake off its growing pains, this experiment in people power will either completely free humanity from its self-constructed shackles or entirely obliterate civilization as we know it. Either way, this is what's happening. Get ready for an exciting ride!

Our time's pretty much all hogged up between Facebook and Twitter, but that isn't stopping ex-MySpace Music CTO Dmitry Shapiro from forming a new social network built around enhanced privacy controls for users — a problem Facebook always slams into with every new major update. The question is, is that enough for a switch?