[Infowarrior] - John McCain ¹ s War On Blogs

[Richard Forno]

(Color me surprised -- thought he had a greater clue about the Internet than
Ted "Intertube" Stevens.......rf)

John McCain¹s War On Blogs
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/12/13/mccain-war-on-blogs/

John McCain has made clear that he doesn¹t like the blogosphere.

Now he has introduced legislation that would treat blogs like Internet
service providers and hold them responsible for all activity in the comments
sections and user profiles. Some highlights of the legislation:

    ­ Commercial websites and personal blogs ³would be required to report
illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to
$300,000.²

    ­ Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such
reports, but under McCain¹s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may
face ³even stiffer penalties² than ISPs.

    ‹ Social networking sites will be forced to take ³effective measures² ‹
such as deleting user profiles ‹ to remove any website that is ³associated²
with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but
also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs
like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that this
proposal may be based more ³on fear or political considerations rather than
on the facts.² When he introduced his legislation to the Senate, McCain
offered no evidence that children are being victimized by people who post
comments on blogs.

McCain¹s legislation could deal a serious blow to the blogosphere. Lacking
resources to police their sites, many individual blogs may have to shut down
open discussion.