Wednesday, November 26, 2008



The next Attorney General has called in the past for "Reasonable Restrictions" on Internet Speech

Here is what US Deputy AG Eric Holder said on NPR Morning Edition on May 28, 1999:
""The court has really struck down every government effort to try to regulate... We tried with regard to pornography. It is going to be a difficult thing but it seems to me that if we come up with reasonable restrictions; reasonable regulations on how people interact on the internet, that is something the Supreme Court and the courts ought to favorably look at."

Source

Has he changed his mind by now? Unlikely

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Reasonable" from whose perspective? Obviously not from the perspective of the U.S. Constitution.

Anonymous said...

I agree with some regulation, especially in the case of pornography, where the regulation is in terms of how names are assigned, so that filters can be used by parents, companies, or public access areas, and ignored for personal use.
How does a parent feel when they are helping their child do their homework, go to whitehouse.com thinking to get info on the administrative branch of government, and are faces with porn.
This would not infringe on the rights of those wanting to go to such sites, but would protect parents, and employers, who don't want such sites in their place.
Adding xxx to a html name would be much more useful as a filter than what is used now, and would open up areas of the internet that are now sometimes blocked (such as going to Sussex sites that are blocked because they have sex in the name)

Anonymous said...

Annon 2, you make a good point and i agree. Human nature being what it is, (naturally abusive) some degree of regulation, (control if you like) is necessary. When people are not controlled to some point, they soon become out of control. The obvious problem is, as Annon-1 states, who will decide what's reasonable?

Personally, i think we should experiment using the media. We should pass a law that says, "only the truth can be broadcast or printed." Yes, i understand that would put most "news" shows, newspapers, and magazines out of business, but no news is better than biased lies.

Anonymous said...

"only the truth shall be broadcast".
Nice idea, but who decides what is "truth"?
Obama, with his utterly delusional ideas?
Al Gore, who's even worse?
The Chinese communist party?

All claim to know the Truth, all are wrong.
All want to control what people can say by disallowing any speech or other expression that doesn't tout their party line.

Anonymous said...

"All claim to know the Truth, all are wrong."

Does that mean you're wrong when you make this claim?

Anonymous said...

No, it means that because of human nature, it simply doesn't matter what the truth REALLY is. The truth will be twisted and contorted to fit the agenda of who is speaking it.

And that's the problem. There is no accountability or responsibility in the news media. It's all about bottom line. Ethics and morality be damned. No one is willing to make appropriate legislation, and more importantly, no one has the balls to enforce it.

But you see, that's what you get when Liberals run the show.

Anonymous said...

There are already laws regarding libel and slander.
--oops posted on wrong thread previously--

How about - when a newspaper makes a mistake, the correction must be printed/displayed as prominently as the original story?

That may encourage some papers to be more thoughtful before making a bald statement, then posting a retraction on page Z-32 in 4 pt type.

Anonymous said...

Don't buy into the Leftist notion that there is no truth. That old tactic is simply used to divide. (your version of the truth, my version of the truth, etc.) The truth has only one version, whereas lies have may versions, one of the main reasons liars get caught.

There is truth and there are lies, which should not be confused with mistakes or errors. Lies are deliberate, errors are not. Truth also doesn't have grey areas as lies do. Something is either true, or it's not.

Anonymous said...

Anon 9:36

ICANN dropped the idea of the TLD "xxx" after hearing from a variety of groups across a wide spectrum of idealogical beliefs. Oddly enough, some pornongraphers were for the domain, while many religious groups were against the domain. This was the third defeat for the proposal and it will not be brought up again.

FYI "whitehouse.com" is no longer a porn site.

The question is not how to filter "content," but rather disseminate information about the content of a site, CD, game or whatever. People continually say that parents need to monitor their child and to a large extent that is true. Yet we as a society must agree that we need to give parents access to information to help them make informed decisions as to what they feel is appropriate for their children.

There are no good solutions. It would be nice if sites could be rated like we do for movies, television shows, games, music etc, but those ratings could only be mandated for sites hosted within the specific country. That in a nutshell is the problem. How do you regulate something that crosses all geographical, social, economic, idealogical and religious boundries? Who is to say that what you find "offensive" in your world and culture is "offensive" and in need of "regulating" in mine?

There are no easy solutions.

Anonymous said...

"Does that mean you're wrong when you make this claim?"

possibly.

"There are no easy solutions."

North Korea adopted the easy solution of shutting itself off from the outside world and killing everyone who didn't like the idea...
Quite a reasonable solution from a leftist perspective (at least as an interim solution until such a time as the entire world has adopted your system and you no longer need to shut out the evil capitalist imperialists).

"I agree with some regulation, especially in the case of pornography, where the regulation is in terms of how names are assigned, so that filters can be used by parents, companies, or public access areas, and ignored for personal use."

Define pornography... And why "just" pornography. Why not also political expression you don't agree with (you don't want people to see that either).
And while you're at it all those evil religious sites promoting peace through Jesus Christ, can't have people see those.

Anonymous said...

There's no such thing as a good thing that doesn't have a down side, is there. The internet is most definitely a very sharp double edged sword. Rather than worrying about who it will cut, worry about who's wielding it.

Leslie Bates said...

The alternative to freedom of speech is political violence.

The Self-Appointed Superior Being does not want to live in a free and civilized society. He wants to live as the master on the plantation.

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