Keep free speech alive on the Internet

Art Vandelay said:
One of the main problems with this bill is that it might be seen as legitimizing other censorship.
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Unfortunately, the other censorship has already been legitimized. It even passed the Supreme Court.
 
Tony said:
What's the original bill? Who sponsored it? And, isn't speech restriction unconstitutional?
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The SOCAS has ruled that the radio spectrum is a scarce resource, and that the government can therefore ration it out, and place restrictions on its use. As for speech in general, I don't know of any specific rationalizinations. Certainly some speech restrictions are legitimate; if I offer to buy advertising time to praise a senator in exchange for his support on a bill, there would be a strong case for a charge of bribery. But I do not believe that the campaign finance restrictions come close to being justified on this basis, nor do I believe that there is a clear way to effectively regulate campaign "contributions" without seriously harming freedom of speech.

shanek
Unfortunately, the other censorship has already been legitimized. It even passed the Supreme Court.
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It's still controversial. If I were a congressman, I would not vote for this bill before making it clear that I do not consider it sufficient.
 
CFLarsen said:
Could someone tell shanek that the Internet is not solely an American thingie....?
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An AMERICAN poster complains about an AMERICAN issue on an AMERICAN internet forum and you take this as evidence he's blinkered about the rest of the world? Given the high proportion of internet users and sites based in America, shane's comment about "political speech on the Internet, including this very forum, might be heavily restricted" is entirely justified, though "even shut down entirely" is going a bit far.

Yes, even if America's internet was heavily censored, you'd still be able to surf and post in Denmark, but can you honestly say the internet as a whole wouldn't be worse for it?
 
Ian Osborne said:
Yes, even if America's internet was heavily censored, you'd still be able to surf and post in Denmark, but can you honestly say the internet as a whole wouldn't be worse for it?
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I wouldn't take bets on the answer .... :p
 
shanek said:
I urge all Americans on this forum to write their Senators and urge them to vote for S.678. You can do so very easily here:

http://action.downsizedc.org/wyc.php?cid=22
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I've heard in the past (anecdotal evidence) that senators pay more attention to "snail mail" than to their e-mail. The reason being that e-mail was simply just to easy to send off ... (hey I didn't say I agreed with the reason..)

Does anyone know if this is still true?
 
Re: Re: Keep free speech alive on the Internet

Shera said:
I've heard in the past (anecdotal evidence) that senators pay more attention to "snail mail" than to their e-mail. The reason being that e-mail was simply just to easy to send off ... (hey I didn't say I agreed with the reason..)

Does anyone know if this is still true?
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I've heard a worse anecdote. Politicians of course have helpers. One of the helpers' jobs is to sort incoming mail into piles: one pile FOR a measure, another pile AGAINST the measure. The heights of the piles allow the politician to assess at a glance how his mail is running on a particular issue. This method offers at least a crude kind of efficiency.

With email, the helpers would have to compile numbers of messages pro and con, and then get the boss to read them and do the arithmetic. Ugh. Too much like work.

Yes, snail mail is better.
 
Ian Osborne said:
An AMERICAN poster complains about an AMERICAN issue on an AMERICAN internet forum and you take this as evidence he's blinkered about the rest of the world? Given the high proportion of internet users and sites based in America, shane's comment about "political speech on the Internet, including this very forum, might be heavily restricted" is entirely justified, though "even shut down entirely" is going a bit far.
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I am reacting to the AMERICAN-BY-DEFAULT part. Assuming that, if nothing specific is said, then it is about the US.

I know that the majority of posters here come from the US (probably!), but does that mean that subjects by default are American? I thought we were supposed to have a global skeptics community? Aren't we proud that so many people from all over the world participate here?

I live in Denmark. Chaos lives in Germany. Patricio in Chile. Luciana in Brazil. Zep, Kiless & SixSixSix in The Danish province of Australia. You, Darat and tim in the UK. Ain't that great?

It is a great asset to be able to contact skeptics from other parts of the world. I've drawn on many skeptics here, and the other way around. I would hate to lose the global feeling on this board. That would happen, if we constantly were to view all issues from an American POV from the start.

Ian Osborne said:
Yes, even if America's internet was heavily censored, you'd still be able to surf and post in Denmark, but can you honestly say the internet as a whole wouldn't be worse for it?
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Of course.
 
Re: Re: Re: Keep free speech alive on the Internet

sackett said:
I've heard a worse anecdote. Politicians of course have helpers. One of the helpers' jobs is to sort incoming mail into piles: one pile FOR a measure, another pile AGAINST the measure. The heights of the piles allow the politician to assess at a glance how his mail is running on a particular issue. This method offers at least a crude kind of efficiency.

With email, the helpers would have to compile numbers of messages pro and con, and then get the boss to read them and do the arithmetic. Ugh. Too much like work.

Yes, snail mail is better.
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Oh yeah. That is definitely a worse anecdote. That not only means they are lazy (I am too ;), so I rarely criticize that).., but worse -- they dont know how to set up a separate e-mail software folder for each issue&position...

Anyway -- I contacted my senators. Thanks Shanek for posting about this.
 
CFLarsen said:
I am reacting to the AMERICAN-BY-DEFAULT part.
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What AMERICAN-BY-DEFAULT part? The senate bill is obviously American, and if it affects US-based websites, that includes this one. I agree we should be proud of being a global board, but nothing in Shane's post suggests he thinks otherwise himself.
 
Ian Osborne said:
What AMERICAN-BY-DEFAULT part? The senate bill is obviously American, and if it affects US-based websites, that includes this one. I agree we should be proud of being a global board, but nothing in Shane's post suggests he thinks otherwise himself.
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And I see it differently: The Internet as being solely American.
 
CFLarsen said:
And I see it differently: The Internet as being solely American.
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That's an interpretation, Claus, not a falsifiable fact or claim to objectively test for truth value.

The only place I could imagine you might have infered this is from this one line from the OP:
Otherwise, political speech on the Internet, including this very forum, might be heavily restricted and even shut down entirely.
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My underline. Isolated from the rest of the post, "entirely" could be used to infer the entire internet. Given the context of the rest of the post, however, one quickly realizes that "entirely" refers to American political speech on American websites.

You cannot ignore the context of a statement. But ultimately, why not just ask shanek what he meant? That's the only way to obtain the statement's actual meaning.
 
Upchurch said:
The only place I could imagine you might have infered this is from this one line from the OP:
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Not just from there. The Internet is global, period. There are American sites, Danish sites, Swedish sites, and so on.

Upchurch said:
But ultimately, why not just ask shanek what he meant?
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Shanek has me on ignore. Well, he says he has.
 
CFLarsen said:
Not just from there. The Internet is global, period. There are American sites, Danish sites, Swedish sites, and so on.
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And only the American sites are affected by American laws, so an American citizen asked Americans to write to their American senators. How does this lead you to infer he's overlooked the fact that the internet is global?
 
Ian Osborne said:
And only the American sites are affected by American laws, so an American citizen asked Americans to write to their American senators. How does this lead you to infer he's overlooked the fact that the internet is global?
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And it was perfectly appropriate for Shane to make the point. Those of us who care about this site should care about this bill. Those of us who are American and perhaps can make a difference should do something about this.
 
Art Vandelay said:
It's still controversial. If I were a congressman, I would not vote for this bill before making it clear that I do not consider it sufficient.
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As would I. It's not sufficient. In my opinion, the whole lot of the campaign "reform" laws should be trashed as the unconstitutional garbage they are. It may not be sufficient to only protect the Internet, but I'd rather have it protected than not.
 
Ian Osborne said:
And only the American sites are affected by American laws, so an American citizen asked Americans to write to their American senators. How does this lead you to infer he's overlooked the fact that the internet is global?
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I've already explained that. Several times.
 
Re: Re: Keep free speech alive on the Internet

Shera said:
Shanek, would you happen to know if this bill already pass the House?
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No. There are two equivalent bills in the House, H.R.1605 and H.R.1606, but they're still in committee.
 
Ian Osborne said:
And only the American sites are affected by American laws, so an American citizen asked Americans to write to their American senators. How does this lead you to infer he's overlooked the fact that the internet is global?
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Looking at all these replies to Claus, I'm hoping now that people see the extents to which he labors for points to use against me...
 
shanek said:
Looking at all these replies to Claus, I'm hoping now that people see the extents to which he labors for points to use against me...
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Thank you for ignoring him.
 
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