Bill Gates on Freedom

kgutwin writes "Here's something I found interesting: Bill Gates on Freedom. A short essay by Bill Gates written for the 24 Hours of Democracy Project. For all the talk on Slashdot about freedom of speech and censoring on the Internet, I found it interesting to read Bill's ideas on the subject. Frankly, I had no idea his views could be so, well, agreeable." Unfortunately, the main reason that Microsoft and the telecommunications companies opposed the Communications Decency Act (which is what he's talking about) is that they were afraid they'd be sucked into enforcing it - having to act as censors themselves. Now that there's no danger of that, they no longer support free speech to any significant degree.

Comments

Bill isn't entirely evil =)

[WWWWolf]

For all the talk on Slashdot about freedom of speech and censoring on the Internet, I found it interesting to read Bill's ideas on the subject. Frankly, I had no idea his views could be so, well, agreeable.

Oh, Bill is not entirely loathable, you know... Personally, I couldn't agree more with his views on spam, for example. =)

The test.

[www.sorehands.com]

Everyone says they are for free speech!

Until you say something that they don't like!

If Microsoft was so much into free speech, why did they order the postings off of Slashdot?

Microsystems (the Cyber Patrol people) said that they believed in free speech and were against censorship. That CyberPatrol was there to prevent censorship on the internet. But, when they saw something they didn't like, they asked the courts to censor for them.

If you believe in free speech, it can't be just free speech for things that you agree with.

Gates delusional?

[billybob2001]

Now he's referring to himself as the Bill of Rights