Democrat = Censorship
- Tuesday, September 28 2010 @ 12:26 PM CST
- Contributed by: filbert
- Views: 2,106
Censorship of the Internet Takes Center Stage in "Online Infringement" Bill
The step from where the Democratic Party is now to where continental Europe found itself in the 1930's is not very far at all. The European politicians of that era (inspired, by the way, by the American Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) thought they knew all the answers, and knew better than anybody else how to make life better for everybody, too. And if a few eggs had to be broken to make a better omelette, well then that was the price that we all had to pay, wasn't it?
This could end quite badly indeed.
Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the "Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act" (COICA).
. . .
This is a censorship bill that runs roughshod over freedom of speech on the Internet. Free speech is vitally important to democracy, which is why the government is restricted from suppressing speech except in very specific, narrowly-tailored situations. But this bill is the polar opposite of narrow — not only in the broad way that it tries to define a site "dedicated to infringing activities," but also in the solution that it tries to impose — a block on a whole domain, and not just the infringing part of the site.
The step from where the Democratic Party is now to where continental Europe found itself in the 1930's is not very far at all. The European politicians of that era (inspired, by the way, by the American Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) thought they knew all the answers, and knew better than anybody else how to make life better for everybody, too. And if a few eggs had to be broken to make a better omelette, well then that was the price that we all had to pay, wasn't it?
This could end quite badly indeed.