FREEPERS - HEADS UP!!! > Federal Election Commission says Web Blogs might be a threat to democracy

Fox News Channel ^ | June 29, 2005

[AWestCoaster]

The Federal Election Commission says Web blogs just might be a threat to democracy and it's considering whether to police them.

The issue, being discussed during FEC hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, is whether some Web sites actually provide unregulated benefits to specific political campaigns. The famously free-spirited Web community is fighting back.....

[Liberty Valance]

The FEC needs to arrest AlGore...
he started this whole internet thingy - LOL IIRC JMHO AFAIC @ www dot com :o)~

[theDentist]

He was known as King George, Mad King George, or Farmer George. It's not forgetting when you've not seen a particular nickname applied to a particular personage.

[figgers3036]

GRRR!! How awful! People online saying what they want! We'd better stamp out that intolerance right now!

[mewzilla]

He was also called Fat George for obvious reasons :)

[Dad yer funny]

there is an expression about "headless nails" that comes to mind , they can be extracted, it just makes a big mess though!!

[Mark in the Old South]

Correction:

Web Blogs are a threat to the People's Democratic Republic!

[LTCJ]

I should be investing heavily in tar-and-feathers futures. As it is, I can't seem to wake up from this episode of The Twilight Zone.

[Outland]

Set up your blog or forum with an offshore web host and keep your identity anonymous.

It's curious how in the land of the "free", many such offshore webhosting services are advertising here on the basis of allowing you unhindered free speech. I thought that was suppose to be a hallmark of this country.

[Sir Gawain]

Ammo buying season already?

[Dad yer funny]

yup , the good folks of New Zealand would've just kept on thinkin' Sir Edmund Hillary Clinton was named after Sir Edmund Hillary,...s**t!!

[theDentist]

I guess, but I just don't recall it. Every day I learn sumpthin' new.
:)

[Stellar Dendrite]

"Set up your blog or forum with an offshore web host and keep your identity anonymous."

Addition: use a proxy ie anonymizer.

[pabianice]

I see... but the NY Times and the Boston Globe do not aid any political candidates ... interesting...

[TomGuy]

from SFGate.com

First lady just doesn't get it

REBECCA EISENBERG

Sunday, February 22, 1998

Hillary Clinton's call for Internet "gatekeeping' reveals a lack of understanding

The Net needs "gatekeeping," said Hillary Rodham Clinton to a select group of important people and special reporters last week, demonstrating yet again the government's tendency to be wrong.
.
.
.

"We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this," she answered, "because there are always competing values. There's no free decision that I'm aware of anywhere in life, and certainly with technology that's the case."

Although technology's new developments are "exciting," Hillary continued, "There are a number of serious issues without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function. What does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation, or to respond to what someone says?"

===

Actually, she does "get it." She saw the potential danger of the Internet to her own political ambitions. Six years later, she saw what it did to John Kerry's candidacy. She "gets it" alright and she wants/needs it stymied before her run in '08.

[mewzilla]

I guess, but I just don't recall it. Every day I learn sumpthin' new. :)

I try :) Pity the FEC doesn't seem to be as educable.

[doug from upland]

I have said it. She will shut down talk radio and the internet with executive orders.

[BallyBill]

What is the definition of irony, I forget?

[tomahawk]

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court no longer protects (inconvenient to the government) free speech under the First Amendment.

I will emigrate if this happens.