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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Licensed to Blog

For rather obvious reasons, this strikes rather close to home:

The American blogosphere is going increasingly “viral” about a proposal advanced at the recent meeting of the Davos Economic Forum by Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, that an equivalent of a “driver’s licence” should be introduced for access to the web. This totalitarian call has been backed by articles and blogs in Time magazine and the New York Times. As bloggers have not been slow to point out, the system being proposed is very similar to one that the government of Red China reluctantly abandoned as too repressive. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the usual unholy alliance of government totalitarians and big business would attempt to end the democratic free-for-all that is the blogosphere. The United Nations is showing similar interest in moving to eliminate free speech.

From the horse's mouth. The HRC inquisitors must be salivating at the thought. The nearest historical parallel to blogging is pamphleteering, which were often signed as nom de plumes. Two of the most famous were Junius, who is quoted in The Globe and Mail's motto, and of course Publius, the collective pen names of John Jay, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers. The blogsphere is a revival of a very old free speech tradition. People being able to speak freely because they can enjoy anonymity. That anonymity is not absolute. Bloggers have been sued for libel, so the bloggers' veil can be pierced when necessary. A license to blog is nothing more than a tool in the hands of authoritarians of all parties.

Posted by Richard Anderson on February 16, 2010 | Permalink

Comments

I agree with you. These people have no God given right to do this. If they take this right as theirs, they would be declaring war on human kind - virtually speaking. It would hasten a return to the darkest of ages.

Posted by: Agha Ali Arkhan | 2010-02-17 8:04:46 PM

Correct. They certainly do seem intent on ending the freedom of speech, expression, assembly and every other right a human should enjoy.

Posted by: Floyd Looney | 2010-02-18 7:59:55 PM

But it seems to be a logical progression . Politicians and beauracrats who lie constantly , the lame stream media slanting the news to the left and now, free speech cops , regulating the internet. The next step - forcible chip implantation in the forehead .

Posted by: daveh | 2010-02-18 8:52:13 PM

If this became reality it would be the end of free speech as we know it. The control freaks would love it. HRC would love it and government would have us right where they want us.

I'm not too worried though because hackers would always be able to provide the codes that would be able to bypass the system and scramble the IP address. It would probably wind up like the gun registry. Useless.

If they try to implement this ,I think the public outcry would be too loud to ignore. Any politician that backs a proposal like this will be toast.



Posted by: peterj | 2010-02-18 10:56:59 PM

peterj: Agreed. Any politician that backs this proposal will be toast. This politician also would be an enemy.

Posted by: Agha Ali Arkhan | 2010-02-19 12:29:52 AM

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