This has been a hot topic in the media and Washington, D.C. of late. Would like to hear everyone's views on this.


Summary:
The Internet is problematic and at times 'too open'; according to some experts. The past practice has been that dialup and broadband services have been common carriers, meaning they have not been selective on to it's delivery, to whom receives it nor prejudiced against the sender.

Besides the issue of porn and propoganda, a tool that can be used by terrorist organizations as well as the over-abundance of information - lawmakers feel they should try to place controls on the Internet itself. Then it becomes a question of what is acceptable and what isn't. Also, privacy remains of the highest import to many involved with it's usage, be it critical data like credit card account numbers to outrageous blogs and pornographic content transfer.

Its a load of BS. It crosses the line that has been crossed before. Monitoring library accounts is somthing that reminds me of what this is sounding an awful lot like. Totally pointless, won't help, and is an undue strain on our privacy.

1- Who cares about who watches what or views what as far as porn goes? Who does it really concern, as long as its between consenting adults, there shouldn't be a problem with producing it, distriubting, or viewing it? Nothing.
2- Propganda? Shit, doesn't the gov't produce enough as is without it having to worry about us seeing even more?


Ugh, it just pisses me off to no end.

That being said, I would be honored if PnP was classified as "questionable contnet" by the gov't someday.

I know the feeling Delta. The internet shouldn't be censored or even THOUGHT about being monitored by any authority except our own (through software like CensorNet and NetNanny).

Also, it seems like they choose the most unqualified people to chair commissions in Congress about this. Whats his name, Ted Stevens, he chairs the commission regulating it. He is a retard, he doesn't know a single thing about anything to do with computers. At all.

Isn't that an old baseball or golf pro?

But you did hit on something about the library monitoring. In our little burg, they suspend your rights to use the public computers if you are ever caught chatting online. *big gasp* We aren't talking the hugely unmanageable realm of IRC, we are talking AIM, MSN, etc. Chances are, most folks aren't going to strike up any chats in the hour per day that is allowed.

Won't be long, they'll be sending in records of what books we read to authorities, just to make a really good case against them sometime for criminal charges. Oh, btw, I might check out the Anarchist's Cookbook just to give them something to use for fuel. Oh wait, that book was written by idiots, nevermind.

He's the crazy man drunk at the airport bar at 3 AM without a plane ticket.

He's also the guy who said this about the internet:
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

At the [...] Jon Stewart replied:
"Why?" with, "Maybe it's because you don't seem to know jack shit about computers or the Internet — but that's okay — you're just the guy in charge of regulating it."

We did that at the library I worked at too. It serves a few purposes that I feel are fine:
1- The Library computers are for use of all people, its a "get on, get off" type thing.
2- We had a lot of kids come in, and because its the general consensus that children are, in fact, just shorter and more retarded versions of adults, we don't want them chatting with the neighborhood rapists.
3- We didn't allow anything to be downloaded onto computers, like MSN, AIM, etc. I always used AIM express to get around this.
4- Computers where for educational/research purposes, not stuff like that.

Rules might be different where you live, but that was the logic where I worked.

Newt Gingrich Sucks:

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And Olbermann's Response:

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Full text here.

Lot of people might be turned off by seeing the headline "Newt Gingrich Says Free Speech May Be Forfeit". It's enough to insure I don't vote for him. Oh wait, even before he opened his mouth on this, wasn't gonna.