McCain Bill Is Lethal Injection For Internet Freedom
Exploits fear of sexual predators and basic misunderstanding of
Internet to attack blogs critical of the warmongering agenda he
fronts for
Paul Joseph Watson
http://PrisonPlanet.com
Friday, December 15, 2006
Republican Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would
fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos
posted by visitors on comment boards, effectively nixing the open
exchange of ideas on the Internet, providing a lethal injection for
unrestrained opinion, and acting as the latest attack tool to chill
freedom of speech on the world wide web.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/151206mccainbill.htm
McCain Bill Is Lethal Injection For Internet Freedom
Exploits fear of sexual predators and basic misunderstanding of
Internet to attack blogs critical of the warmongering agenda he
fronts for
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Friday, December 15, 2006
Republican Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would
fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos
posted by visitors on comment boards, effectively nixing the open
exchange of ideas on the Internet, providing a lethal injection for
unrestrained opinion, and acting as the latest attack tool to chill
freedom of speech on the world wide web.
McCain\'s proposal, called the \"Stop the Online Exploitation of Our
Children Act,\" encourages informants to shop website owners to the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who then pass the
information on to the relevant police authorities.
Comment boards for specific articles are extremely popular and also
notoriously hard to moderate. Popular articles often receive comments
that run into the thousands over the course of time. In many cases,
individuals hostile to the writer\'s argument deliberately leave
obscene comments and images simply to sully the reputation of the
website owners. Therefore under the terms of this bill, right-wing
extremists from a website like Free Republic could effectively
terminate a liberal leaning website like Raw Story by the act of
posting a single photograph of a naked child. This precedent could be
the kiss of death for blogs as we know them and its reverberations
would negatively impact the entire Internet.
Under the banner of saving the children from sexual predators, McCain
is obviously on a mission to stamp out the influence of the
burgeoning blogosphere and its increasing hostility to the
warmongering agenda that he fronts for.
\"This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently
mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the
facts,\" warns Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic
Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
McCain has publicly expressed his distaste for blogs in the past and
this is why any protestation that he is simply aiming to \"protect the
children\" with this legislation falls on deaf ears.
In a May 2006 speech at Jerry Falwell\'s Liberty University, McCain
attacked the blogosphere as a refuge of those only infatuated with
self-expression. He was trying to minimize the importance of the last
true outpost of freedom of speech, the Internet, and portray it as
nothing more than a swap shop for egos and hyperbole.
So if the blogosphere is nothing more than a bulletin board for self-
important know it alls, what possible threat could that be to young
children? Where is the evidence that kids are being victimized by
people who post comments on blogs?
There is no evidence but that doesn\'t really matter when you consider
that a sizable portion of Congress critters who will be voting on
this legislation if it comes to pass, don\'t even know what the
Internet itself is (it\'s not a big truck), never mind how it\'s used.
And then a sizable majority of the remaining House members probably
hate the blogosphere as much as McCain, because it has replaced the
lapdog mainstream media in acting as the 4th estate in muckraker
reporting, anti-war protest, and holding public officials to task.
In reality, sexual predators have always confined their grooming to
live chat rooms, or in the case of Republican pervert Mark Foley,
instant messaging and PDA\'s. Pedophiles are never going to leave a
record of their sordid advances on message boards because in most
cases, their IP address and location can be obtained immediately from
the server log. And as reported by C Net, \"Studies by the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children show the online sexual
solicitation of minors has dropped in the past five years, despite
the growth of social-networking services.\"
McCain\'s proposed bill is just another step in greasing the skids for
Internet 2, a tightly controlled, regulated and privileged world wide
web where government approval will be required just to run a blog.
In recent months, a chorus of propaganda intended to demonize the
Internet and lead it down this path has spewed forth from numerous
establishment organs.
- The White House\'s own recently de-classified strategy for \"winning
the war on terror\" targets Internet conspiracy theories as a
recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to \"diminish\" their
influence.
- The Pentagon recently announced its effort to infiltrate the
Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.
- In a speech last month, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff
identified the web as a \"terror training camp,\" through which
\"disaffected people living in the United States\" are developing
\"radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.\" Chertoff pledged
to dispatch Homeland Security agents to local police departments in
order to aid in the apprehension of domestic terrorists who use the
Internet as a political tool.
- In an interview with Fox News last month, Bush senior slammed
Internet bloggers for creating an \"adversarial and ugly climate.\"
- A landmark legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry
Association of America and other global trade organizations seeks to
criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright
infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web - and
their argument is supported by the U.S. government.
- The European Union, led by former Stalinist and potential future
British Prime Minister John Reid, has also vowed to shut down
\"terrorists\" who use the Internet to spread propaganda.
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