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Congress passes new internet censorship bill
As summarized by Declan McCullagh at CNet, this new law would require that "anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including 'obscene' cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000. That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection." If this law were widely enforced, the likely result would be the disappearance of public wi-fi. Who can afford to monitor every image that passes through their wi-fi network? And who wants to risk the massive fine for someone else's naughty browsing? Safer and easier just to shut down the open network. While the most committed anti-obscenity, pro-censorship activists tend to be conservatives, this bill was pushed through by the Democrats. Wednesday's vote caught Internet companies by surprise: the Democratic leadership rushed the SAFE Act to the floor under a procedure that's supposed to be reserved for noncontroversial legislation. It was introduced October 10, but has never received even one hearing or committee vote. In addition, the legislation approved this week has changed substantially since the earlier version and was not available for public review. Not one Democrat opposed the SAFE Act. Two Republicans did: Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning presidential candidate from Texas, and Rep. Paul Broun from Georgia. I'm not a big fan of the Ron Paul revolution, but he deserves kudos here.
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Every few years the US Congress passes some asinine law targetting internet porn, which they claim is needed to "protect the children". The law is usually so overreaching, unenforceable and blatantly unconstitutional that it has no effect beyond generating a few test cases that bounce around the courts for years until, surprise, it's declared unconstitutional. This stupid cycle has started again with the