McCain Bill Is Lethal Injection For Internet Freedom

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet

Friday, December 15, 2006 - Exploits fear of sexual predators and basic misunderstanding of
Internet to attack blogs critical of the warmongering agenda he fronts
for -

Republican Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would
fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos
posted by visitors on comment boards, effectively nixing the open exchange
of ideas on the Internet, providing a lethal injection for unrestrained
opinion, and acting as the latest attack tool to chill freedom of speech
on the world wide web.

McCain's proposal, called the "Stop the Online Exploitation of
Our Children Act," encourages informants to shop website owners
to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who then
pass the information on to the relevant police authorities.

Comment boards for specific articles are extremely popular and also
notoriously hard to moderate. Popular articles often receive comments
that run into the thousands over the course of time. In many cases,
individuals hostile to the writer's argument deliberately leave obscene
comments and images simply to sully the reputation of the website owners.
Therefore under the terms of this bill, right-wing extremists from a
website like Free Republic could effectively terminate a liberal leaning
website like Raw Story by the act of posting a single photograph of
a naked child. This precedent could be the kiss of death for blogs as
we know them and its reverberations would negatively impact the entire
Internet.

Under the banner of saving the children from sexual predators, McCain
is obviously on a mission to stamp out the influence of the burgeoning
blogosphere and its increasing hostility to the warmongering agenda
that he fronts for.

"This constitutionally dubious proposal is being made apparently
mostly based on fear or political considerations rather than on the
facts," warns Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation in San Francisco.

McCain has publicly expressed his distaste for blogs in the past and
this is why any protestation that he is simply aiming to "protect
the children" with this legislation falls on deaf ears.

In a May 2006 speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, McCain
attacked
the blogosphere as a refuge of those only infatuated with self-expression.
He was trying to minimize the importance of the last true outpost of
freedom of speech, the Internet, and portray it as nothing more than
a swap shop for egos and hyperbole.