US threatening to censor internet

[Zerovirus]

Government Official = Celebrity. Government Official's Life = Proposals such as this one.

Now do a bit of mad libbing and ask that question again.

[Dixie]

Somehow, to the best of my knowledge, the US have always had a weak spot for overly right-wing censorships such as this. In the 20s-30s, it was alcohol, in the 80s, it was the music and television industries... There are probably a lot more such examples. I'm not saying everybody in the US thinks that way, obviously. And neither am I trying to say "we, the other countries, are so much better!". But a portion of people with a measure of power do think that way in the US, and some ludicrous projects such as this tend to come up every now and then...

[Zerovirus]

I should go post this on 4chan, give them the emails of the senators who support this, and then watch with my trollface mask on.

-awesomesmiley-

[Gambit]

Sounds like an plan to me Zerovirus.

And the press doesn't exist to inform anymore. They exist — like any other television show — for ratings. We must watch them and their advertisements. This wouldn't cause as big of a stir as would some pastor of some tiny Floridian church burning a book.

[Eleazar]

Senate is such an abheration!... We've got it on the federal level here in Canada (not provincial, thank god), and it's utter non-sense. Seriously, how can you call yourself democratic when you have a senate, i.e. a bunch of non-elected old timers who are there for life...

In the US senators are elected for terms of 6 years. Though they are frequently old, and may run for subsequent terms.

[Joram]

Some people get really mad when their government tries to do stuff like this. But if you have a problem with it, why vote for people that might potentially do it? You're not attacking the root cause, and so all it does is delay the time that it will be implemented. If we keep people like this in office, they'll just bring the matter up again some time in the future, and again, and again, and eventually it will get implemented when people have moved on to protest something even more extreme. We thus progress into undesirable amounts of government control/interference/whatever you want to call it.

Joram, there are legislators we don't vote for or can't vote for or against who bring up legislation like this. You make a valid point in that people are responsible for their elected leaders, but living in Minnesota I don't get to choose who the senator is in Vermont, or Utah, or anywhere else.

And although you make the distinction of "two evils" I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that this is a direct result of the evils of one party or another.

Don't fret, plenty of awful legislation never makes it out of committee, or will easily get thwarted in discussion.

I know. Nothing against anyone here. But someone votes these guys in, and I'm sure that it wasn't just a bunch of people who thought the internet should be censored. Probably a lot of people won't even hear about this, and will continue to vote these guys in office. *sighs*

Two evils: Correct. It is not the result of the evils of one party or another. It is the result of the inherent evils of both parties. Currently, the majority of both Republicans and Democrats favor expansion of government. The primary difference is that the Republicans are catering to a different audience, and sprinkle their speech with "small government" talk just enough to keep the votes coming in (after all, they don't need to be for small government as long as they are for smaller government). The other difference is what they talk about expanding.

A Republican can get away with expanding the government to fight terrorism, but heaven forbid a democrat should expand government to fight poverty!

Don't fret? I suppose that's good advice. I don't think this will get passed, but it blows me away that we even get this proposed. Thanks to boru for providing that list of sponsers. None from my state, so I can't do much about them, but it's still nice to know.

[sur.nhm]

[rant]
This is truly horrendous, but than again, there's a reason people call those right-wing senators 'The American Taliban'.
[/rant]
At least for the moment the parliament where I live didn't approve a similar law.

[ancestral]

Two evils: Correct. It is not the result of the evils of one party or another. It is the result of the inherent evils of both parties. Currently, the majority of both Republicans and Democrats favor expansion of government. The primary difference is that the Republicans are catering to a different audience, and sprinkle their speech with "small government" talk just enough to keep the votes coming in (after all, they don't need to be for small government as long as they are for smaller government). The other difference is what they talk about expanding.

Feel free to make opinions on the parties and on the issues but don't necessarily assume that any third party candidate wouldn't side with any given piece of legislation in Congress, were they present.

[Joram]

Feel free to make opinions on the parties and on the issues but don't necessarily assume that any third party candidate wouldn't side with any given piece of legislation in Congress, were they present.

I don't. What makes you think I did?

[Joram]

[rant]
This is truly horrendous, but than again, there's a reason people call those right-wing senators 'The American Taliban'.
[/rant]

On the list of sponsors, 9 were Democrats, 5 Republicans. Are our Democrats right-wing?

EDIT: Excuse me, those were all cosponsors. The actual sponsor was also a Democrat.

[sur.nhm]

[rant]
This is truly horrendous, but than again, there's a reason people call those right-wing senators 'The American Taliban'.
[/rant]

On the list of sponsors, 9 were Democrats, 5 Republicans. Are our Democrats right-wing?

EDIT: Excuse me, those were all cosponsors. The actual sponsor was also a Democrat.

Quite possibly, though where I live there is no real left - either they're ephemeral or right wingers in disguise, which means I might be more than a bit paranoid regarding politicians.

[Tonepoet]

Well yes Joram the people voted them in but do you really think somebody's going to run their campaign on "Hey everybody! Let's censor the internet!" He's probably going to keep that opinion to himself until the time comes to petition for the bill and vote upon it in congress and by that time it's out of our hands. Nobody's perfect and power can corrupt, so these people are going to put their best foot forward when running for election and then things can get ugly. Like this.

I find it interesting that this site cites Obama as the man fighting internet censorship when it's during his term that we signed in an internet kill switch for ourselves. Since that's an internet control issue, I think he'll sign on this without second thought. I think almost anybody in his position would.

If it gets passed, this'll probably be what causes a revolution

Well... this or too much gun control, but that's a completely separate topic...

Still, I can't even imagine this actually getting passed.

Not entirely unrelated. In our gun control topic, it was mentioned that the internet could be used as a strategic resource by the people to start an effective revolution even without guns if the case need be. It's stuff like this that makes that makes such reliance on the established means impractical. I seriously believe that if the people lack teeth that democracy is just an illusion and that power hungry people will slowly do whatever they can to depower the citizenry. I'd go on but this is where the topics start to diverge...

[styles1005]

*gets out Uzi, pipe bomb*

*flies to Washington DC*

Well, I think you know my opinion about this now. I think government-enforced censorship is horrible and should never happen, not least because, even if it is censoring something you'd actually want censored, it's opening the way for further government infringements.

[johndh]

even if it is censoring something you'd actually want censored

Who's to decide what that includes, though?

Lawmakers can get just about anything passed if they lie and say it's "to protect children". What a crock.

[boru]

"Protection" is exactly how this is going to be framed. No one in Washington will ever mention "internet censorship." As far as they're concerned, they are protecting the poor dumb citizenry from hackers, pirates and ID thieves. As for the unintended consequences of their laws, their reply is, as always, "Trust us."

But really, Americans can't blame this on one wing or another. It's our own damn fault. Most of us don't even vote, or even keep up on the news of the day. This is the government we deserve.