Fear is the most powerful tool that any government has to expand their powers. Or put optimistically: a common enemy has historically been the most effective way to unite a people.
Morally it's hard to counter public policy that claims to make you safer because you're asking someone to not care about the safety of "our children".
Biologically asking someone to not be afraid is asking them to use rational thought to counter a hard coded evolutionary mechanism.
The existence of government at all is dependent and predicated on fear. If we don't fear anarchy and foreign powers, we won't see a need for government.
Fear for our lives and fear for our souls are what fuels the two largest organisations on the planet.
Lieberman is doing a clumsy job of using a well honed tool to try to expand government power. It is pathetic in it's simplicity and predictability and incredible that he can't see the political parallels between this and tagging books as "dangerous".
But I don't think Joe is a stupid man. I think he is being controlled by powerful forces. Through our HN, Reddit, slashdot and techmeme lenses we see the Internet and it's disruption at a micro level. We forget the massive macro disruption that is occurring and that is destroying enormous old profitable businesses.
If you are the CEO of a record label, film studio, newspaper conglomerate or book publisher you are scared out of your wits because a massive, and possibly the only competitive barrier to entry has fallen: distribution. Your printing presses, distribution centers, record stores and logging companies aren't needed by a competitor. Information distribution has become free.
Incumbents can't compete with the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple because they've sucked up all the hot tech talent and startups are consuming the rest. So the only strategy left is to disrupt the distribution medium. Break the Internet - or at least sieze control of it and regulate yourself back into a competitive position.
There is enormous pressure on our senators and congressmen to use any excuse they can to regulate the Internet. Creating a non-level playing field is the only bullet many old world businesses have left to fight the innovators and the only politically acceptable excuse is fear.
Any politician who wants to limit the freedom of communication on the Internet has declared themselves disingenuous at best.
> "There is enormous pressure on our senators and congressmen to use any excuse they can to regulate the Internet."
Some of them probably know what the main agenda really is, like the main sponsors of the bill. But many of the others probably don't and they actually think that by voting for a bill like SOPA they are doing a good thing overall, and they are actually saving people's jobs (once they fall for MPAA's whole propaganda), and don't even take into consideration that by "protecting" those jobs, they could be destroying a lot more, not just economy-wise, but liberty wise, too, simply by voting for a bill like SOPA, which was of course mainly written by MPAA/RIAA themselves.
This is why I cringed when I watched the CNN GOP debate the other night and some of them were basically saying they would listen to the "experts" or "advisors" and go with whatever they are proposing. This is how we keep passing laws like these. Because the politicians themselves lack any common sense or leadership, and mindlessly pass a bill that is completely written by some corporations, or they listen to advisors who have an interest in continuing the wars, and so on. Many times they don't even read the bills themselves before they vote. They just decide on what they hear from other colleagues or from the "experts".
I think that for the most part, congress members are far more concerned with receiving campaign donations, staying in the good graces of their party leaders and being re-elected than the actual issues.
"Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
There's quite a few joking replies on this thread, most of which I got a few chuckles out of.
But the problem just keeps popping back up.
In Australia we had the very-close run thing of the ISP based internet filter. This got as far as live trials. Most people didn't mind an opt-in filter, but this one had no unfiltered option.
The government planned to hand off censorship to some type of unelected board, and the entire thing was cloaked in secrecy, so you weren't allowed to know the contents of the 'filtered' content (because they say that just makes people go and look at them, a circular argument if ever there was one).
Of course they promised it would only be kiddie porn, terrorists and all that type of thing.
Then the trial list got leaked onto Wikileaks and of course there were all sorts of ordinary sites caught up in the mesh (some had been hacked by porn sites in the past, but had been cleaned up again). There were others that didn't fall under the government criteria, and it was just obvious they didn't have any intention to stick to their own criteria.
Luckily a close election was forecast so the government dumped the thing as it needed every vote it could.
But, as you say, the entrenched businesses and terrified of being taken out of business and are doing everything they can to get controls placed onto the internet.
Australian retailers are getting killed by internet imports and internet price-checking (ie, going into a retail store, picking the item, checking on a phone for a better price, and ordering online). The big-name retailers have already moaned to the government to do something, which of course they got laughed at by the general public so dropped it.
But the point is this ; if the tools were there, the government might have proposed a 'report for being un-Australian site' type button. It's equally possible to imagine a 'report for exporting jobs overseas' button - or whatever other crazy scenarios you can think of.
I can't see it stopping until a constitutional amendment or similar high-level decision is made declaring government fiddling off limits. There's US constitutional protection for owning a gun, or freedom of speech, but not one guaranteeing a free internet. Eventually free internet is likely to become as important as both put together.
Now the government only has to give subsidies to ISPs that do 'voluntarily block content' with a "$9.8 million scheme". Much like UK's censorship regime.
Morally it's hard to counter public policy that claims to make you safer because you're asking someone to not care about the safety of "our children".
Biologically asking someone to not be afraid is asking them to use rational thought to counter a hard coded evolutionary mechanism.
The existence of government at all is dependent and predicated on fear. If we don't fear anarchy and foreign powers, we won't see a need for government.
Fear for our lives and fear for our souls are what fuels the two largest organisations on the planet.
Lieberman is doing a clumsy job of using a well honed tool to try to expand government power. It is pathetic in it's simplicity and predictability and incredible that he can't see the political parallels between this and tagging books as "dangerous".
But I don't think Joe is a stupid man. I think he is being controlled by powerful forces. Through our HN, Reddit, slashdot and techmeme lenses we see the Internet and it's disruption at a micro level. We forget the massive macro disruption that is occurring and that is destroying enormous old profitable businesses.
If you are the CEO of a record label, film studio, newspaper conglomerate or book publisher you are scared out of your wits because a massive, and possibly the only competitive barrier to entry has fallen: distribution. Your printing presses, distribution centers, record stores and logging companies aren't needed by a competitor. Information distribution has become free.
Incumbents can't compete with the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple because they've sucked up all the hot tech talent and startups are consuming the rest. So the only strategy left is to disrupt the distribution medium. Break the Internet - or at least sieze control of it and regulate yourself back into a competitive position.
There is enormous pressure on our senators and congressmen to use any excuse they can to regulate the Internet. Creating a non-level playing field is the only bullet many old world businesses have left to fight the innovators and the only politically acceptable excuse is fear.
Any politician who wants to limit the freedom of communication on the Internet has declared themselves disingenuous at best.