Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) has created quite a stir with both negative words about the blogosphere and more importantly, with legislation that could affect it. I'm sure the political blogs, which have been around longer than most blogs, have irritated politicians from the get-go. The Drudge Report and Slate have been thorns in the sides of Presidents for several years now. The first thing McCain did to irritate bloggers was a speech he gave at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. He basically said (and I paraphrase here) that bloggers are egocentric windbags who do not listen to nor take the opinion of others. For his actual words, here are two links: The National Review and a blog site called Think Progress. Lest you think this is a non issue, When the Think Progress Blog posted McCain's remarks, they got 267 responses.
The next issue deals with sexual predators. And child porn. No, this is not a non sequitur. John McCain has introduced legislation that is aimed at serious restrictions on blog sites. Mostly those with open commenting abilities. He and his Bill say that sexual predators and child pornographers can post on our sites so therefore we should all be responsible for checking out the commenters on our posts. ????? The bill also seems to hit on some other issues that may actually be legitimate, like illegal use of copyrighted material on blogs. The sobering aspect is the penalty phase: up to $300,000 in fines. Can you spell N-A-P-S-T-E-R? If you are interested in reading the legislation itself, here is a link to the Bill. It sounds to me like the legislation would require us, or at least the hosts (hello Matt and Caleb) to police their sites in such a way as to turn up and turn in illegal websites, user ID's etc of posters and commenters. Maybe someone else can explain it differently, but that's how I read it.
This has hit the blogworld by storm. Much posting and commenting! Stephen Frug on Blogspot. I found out about it by lurking on a local Cleveland Blog called Brewed Fresh Daily (which definitely should have been my title how dare they lol). They referenced a site called Boing Boing which got me to other McCain posts as well.
When you get a chance, you might want to read about all this. Some of the comments on the posts talk about things like First Amendment Rights violations, free speech gags, penalties for violations on the sexual predator side of this argument that might cause most people to shut down their blogs.
What do you think?
Peace Out 3C
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