[...] It’s a terrible label — “netizen” — but an important concept. If people don’t really believe they have an interest in this thing that we have built, then it is doomed. The converse, alas, isn’t true — but people giving a damn about the health of the Internet is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for it to be healthy, going forward. And that’s what the events of this past week were about. All of a sudden, millions of people took the Net seriously as a place that needed defending, and millions more tried to figure out why those first millions were so upset and what they were upset about. It does not, by itself, solve any problems — we might still get some terrible law down the road, on this issue or any one of a number of others, that will strangle this medium. But it sets the foundation for processes that can solve those problems, and that is a very, very good thing.