Misuse and Abuse of the Internet to be Controlled
I encourage all Free Media Productions readers and writers to contact your political representatives to tell them you support measures like this. I am a REALIST and am sick of people living in a fantasy world. With powerful search engines like google peering into the blogesphere, we can’t afford to have people’s reputations maligned by libel and impersonation in the name of the god forsaken free market. The internet is real life. Both the Third Positionists and Marxists should support these measures.
Ideologically, The Third Positionists should support these measures because they take society one step closer to a totalitarian state. The Marxist-Leninists should support them because the more anger and antagonism they produce, the better chance there could be for a revolution.
This is what I have to say about Cowards who hide behind the apparent “anonymous status” of the internet and abuse it. Hail totalitarianism and death to liberalism!
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07112009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/gag_the_internet__178749.htm
When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling.
Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a “chilling effect” on speech that might hurt someone’s feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.
Advance copies of Sunstein’s new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the prominence with which Sunstein is about to be endowed, his worrying views are fair game now. Sunstein is President Obama’s choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It’s the bland titles that should scare you the most.
“Although obscure,” reported the Wall Street Journal, “the post wields outsize power. It oversees regulations throughout the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Obama aides have said the job will be crucial as the new administration overhauls financial-services regulations, attempts to pass universal health care and tries to forge a new approach to controlling emissions of greenhouse gases.”
Sunstein was appointed, no doubt, off the success of “Nudge,” his previous book, which suggests that government ought to gently force people to be better human beings.
Czar is too mild a world for what Sunstein is about to become. How about “regulator in chief”? How about “lawgiver”? He is Obama’s Obama.
In “On Rumors,” Sunstein reviews how views get cemented in one camp even when people are presented with persuasive evidence to the contrary. He worries that we are headed for a future in which “people’s beliefs are a product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire.” That future, though, is already here, according to Sunstein. “We hardly need to imagine a world, however, in which people and institutions are being harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet,” he writes. “We live in that world. What might be done to reduce the harm?”
Sunstein questions the current libel standard – which requires proving “actual malice” against those who write about public figures, including celebrities. Mere “negligence” isn’t libelous, but Sunstein wonders, “Is it so important to provide breathing space for damaging falsehoods about entertainers?” Celeb rags, get ready to hire more lawyers.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Thanks for informing me. I actually contacted my Senators and Representative.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
The common law in the United States has already raised the question of defamatory libel on the internet. The major legal question, which Sunstein will likely provide an answer to, is whether or not blogs, forums and others constitute “publication” – a necessary element in the applying charges of libel (or slander).
Previously, the internet was held as a community; and in the past the legal definition of defamation (slander or libel) did not apply – similar to how you don’t get punished for saying malignant things to your friends in a bar or a park.
Also, section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) provides “immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by others:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Similarly, you have to make an important distinction between torts (civil wrongs). Some states have laws regulating what’s known as “criminal defamation,” while others do not. In practice though, these are rarely applied. If it’s not criminal defamation, then it really is just a matter of filing a lawsuit. Typically, US courts have not exactly been pro-plaintiff in defamation cases (historically), since it depends significantly on the burden of proving various elements of malicious action.
September 1st, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Please stop the misuse of the term “Out of the Box”. It does not mean the same as “outside of the square”. You have it as a title on your menu to the left.
The term actually means: Items, functionalities, or features provided out of the box are those that do not require any additional installations, plug-ins, expansion packs, or products. In addition to being used for tangible products, the phrase is often used in a less literal sense for software, which may not be distributed in an actual box but offer certain functions “out of the box,” e.g. without modification.
You’re an intelligent person. Surely you understand the difference between those things that come out of a box, and those that are created outside of a box. Great thinkers are recognised for the difference in their thinking. Not for stock standard thinking that comes out of the box.