This is very interesting. God help us if this actually happens!! MR
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_Should President Obama Control The Internet?_
(http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2295974/posts)
_Townhall.com ^_
(http://www.freerepublic.com/^http://townhall.com/columnists/AustinHill/2009/07/19/should_president_obama_control_the_internet) |
July 19, 2009 | Austin Hill
President Barack Obama wants to control the internet.
And if our President has his way, this website may soon be under legal
attack from the White House.
Since the internets emergence in the private sector (it actually began in
the public sector, through developments at the U.S. Department of Defense
back in the 1960s), officials in our U.S. Government have generally viewed
the internet as a good and necessary thing.
In 1996, when former Sun Microsystems Officer John Gage began a movement
to get high-tech companies involved in providing internet infrastructure for
the worlds schools, libraries, and clinics, President Bill Clinton and
Vice President Al Gore marked the first ever NetDay celebration by traveling
to Concord, California, and spending the day re-wiring a high school campus
with computer cables.
Similarly, both President Clinton and President George W. Bush pushed for
every school in America to be connected to the world wide web, and internet
connectivity generally flourished around the globe under the leadership of
both Presidents, and by both public and private funding means.
But today, things are different. After approximately seven months in
office, President Obama controls, in varying degrees, General Motors, Chrysler,
and a variety of financial services companies. He is seeking to control,
among other things, the health care industry, the energy industry, and the
amount of money that business executives are paid by their employers.
And now it appears that the President who ran the most successful,
web-savvy political campaign in world history, wants to curtail what other people
can do online.
Cass Sunstein, an American legal scholar and Harvard Law Professor, has
been appointed by President Obama to head up the White House Office Of
Information And Regulatory Affairs. His title is sufficiently broad and
ambiguous, but he wields plenty of power. And with advance copies circulating of his
new book On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can
Be Done, Americans who still care about their rights to freedom of speech
should be paying close attention.
You owe it to yourself to review what has been reported in both the New
York Post and the Wall Street Journal about Mr. Sunstein, and the ideas that
he advances in his book. And while we dont know precisely what Obama and
Sunstein will be doing, many of the thoughts that Mr. Sunstein expresses
about the internet seem consistent with President Obamas proclivity to control
things, generally.
Perhaps most disturbing is Mr. Sunsteins vision for the future of web
content, as he argues for a so-called notice and take down law. Under this
provision, those who operate websites - - The Washington Post, radio stations,
private bloggers, and perhaps even you, yourself -we would all be required
take down falsehoods upon notice from the U.S. government.
And not only would the original content of websites be scrutinized by the
government for falsehoods, website operators would also be held responsible
for the content of posts created by the websites visitors and readers. At
first blush it may seem that, for a web operator to be held accountable for
content generated by posters, is completely untenable. But that may very
well be Mr. Sunsteins goal - - to create an untenable situation for website
operators - given his assertion that a chilling effect on those who would
spread destructive falsehoods can be an excellent idea..
But who shall determine what, exactly, is true and false? Mr. Sunstein
laments the supposed lie that emerged during last years presidential race,
that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists. Despite that fact that a
friendship between Obama and known domestic terrorist William Ayers was something
that both men acknowledged, Sunstein alludes to the notion that this was
one of those destructive falsehoods of the sort that needs to be policed.
As I was recently talking about this matter on-air at Arizonas NewsTalk
92-3 KTAR radio, a caller to the show observed that theres no way this could
be legal, or constitutional.. Thoughtful Americans of all sorts will
immediately view this situation through the lenses of constitutionally guaranteed
rights.
But issues of legality dont seem to matter, at times, with the Obama
Administration. In March of this year, there was nothing illegal about
executives of the AIG Corporation being paid bonuses that they earned from their
employer, but they were harassed and publicly belittled, nonetheless.
President Obama himself demonized them, while dozens of Obama supporters
demonstrated in front of the private residences of the executives, alleging that it
was unfair for those executives to be making so much money.
In a similar way, it appears that the Obama Administration may be
ushering-in an era of harassment for website operators. Regardless of what U.S.
courts may or may not say about this in the future, a notice and take down
letter from the White House could have quite a chilling effect for today.
