Posted on 07/19/2009 5:16:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
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 internet’s emergence in the private sector (it actually began in the public sector, through developments at the U.S. Department of Defense back in the 1960’s), 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 world’s 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 don’t know precisely what Obama and Sunstein will be doing, many of the thoughts that Mr. Sunstein expresses about the internet seem consistent with President Obama’s proclivity to control things, generally.
Perhaps most disturbing is Mr. Sunstein’s 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 website’s 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. Sunstein’s 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 year’s 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 Arizona’s NewsTalk 92-3 KTAR radio, a caller to the show observed that “there’s 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” don’t 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.
Control the Internet? I don’t trust the man to control his wife’s waredrobe, much less anyhing of value or concern to anyone else on the planet.
1984
They can take my keyboard from my dead cold hands.
And think of all the crap the left spewed about GWB over the years. The most ridiculous being: The George Bush weather machine that created Hurricane Katrina so as to destroy black people.
Unbelievable. We all knew this was coming though.
I have no doubt they are going to try this at some point and at that point people are going to have to join together to take drastic steps because it is officially a totalitarian state at that point. And it is bad enough already, but these people are fearing no consequences thus far until the ignorance of the public catches up to what they are in fact doing. Active dissent is needed. Palin is going to be needed with the audience she draws to speak out against what is going on here.
AMEN!
My daughter spent time teaching in China during the Schezchaun earthquake. Fortunately, she was nowhere near the quake, but the government tried to censor news of their incompetent handling by blocking certain websites. Friends and relatives got around it and communicated by posting blogs on websites which they hadn't thought to have blocked.
The young people in China are amazingly sophisticated about knowing how to do this, even with U.S. companies such as Google providing the government with the tools such as blocking software to control the information flow.
http://tinyurl.com/nfx2nq
I had trouble getting past the title, with its name for obama. No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President. I have never referred to the thug in our White House by any title higher than "former US Senator", nor will I until I see evidence that the November 2008 election was at least a lawful mistake by easily deluded voters.
As for a socialist tyrant controlling the Internet, I think the First Amendment is perfectly clear: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. The liberals really do want a dictator with no limitations on their Dear Leader's power. As much as I loved Reagan and love Palin, I want my president (once we have a legitimate one) to follow the written words of a formal Constitution that places limits on the power government can exercise over our lives.
I know, but it is this arrogant, mealy-mouthed lying pos, who sits in the People’s House who does exactly what the left accused President Bush of doing’
The "Masters of our Universe" knows what is best for us proles.
Submit. Obey and take a long ride on your free Unicorn while you follow that rainbow.
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