McCain Proposes Regulations for Bloggers

I'm not really sure that US Senator and presidential hopeful John
McCain really gets the internet. Or, at least, not blogs anyway. He's
drafted legislation requiring websites to monitor and report illegal
images and videos or pay a $300,000 fine. "In recent years, technology
has contributed to the greater distribution and availability, and, some
believe, desire for child pornography," McCain said in a Senate floor speech.

It's
not clear to me whether this would include links to pages with illegal
content. This would make a crazy requirement even more crazy -- you'd
have to follow every link submitted to your site to make sure the
content was legit. What is clear is that it would apply to comments on
blogs.

CNET News.com:

Internet
service providers already must follow those reporting requirements. But
McCain's proposal is liable to be controversial because it levies the
same regulatory scheme--and even stiffer penalties--on even individual
bloggers who offer discussion areas on their Web sites.

"I am
concerned that there is a slippery slope here," said Kevin Bankston, an
attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
"Once you start creating categories of industries that must report
suspicious or criminal behavior, when does that stop?"

According
to CNET, "McCain's proposal, called the "Stop the Online Exploitation
of Our Children Act," requires that reports be submitted to the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which in turn will
forward them to the relevant police agency," and a "Web site must
retain any 'information relating to the facts or circumstances' of the
incident for at least six months. Webmasters would be immune from civil
and criminal liability if they followed the specified procedures
exactly."

CNET also noted that "McCain scored 31 of 100 points on a News.com 2006 election guide scoring technology-related votes."

McCain
has been shifting to the right in order to appeal to religious
conservatives in his presidential race. This is just the sort of
'pro-family' crap they love -- harsh, poorly thought out, and totally
unworkable. Republicans are against big government -- except when
they're for it. Let's hope this goes nowhere.