Cyberspace Wins Free Speech Ruling

Prodigal yo-yo writes "Cyberspace Communications, Inc., and several other plaintiffs won a favorable ruling in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals recently in the Cyberspace v. Engler lawsuit to overturn an unconstitutionally broad Internet censorship law. The 2 page ruling affirms an injunction against enforcement of the law while the case is tried." It is good to keep in mind that besides Federal censorship laws, many states have passed such laws as well.

Comments

Re:Yeah! Censorship sucks

[mikethegeek]

Passing any kind of restriction on speech is a slippery slope that we don't want to go down...

Let's face it, guys and gals, the Internet as it is today (cheap, international, instantaneous) is threatening to ALL establishment powers. Finally, access to almost infinate information is there for the taking for anyone with a cheap PC and a modem.

All you have to do is look at the election coverage to know what is at stake here... There is a lot that went on in the Algore recount-until-I-win fury that the FCC licenced and regulated dominant media didn't report. The Internet allows anyone with information to distribute it worldwide. The Internet enabled people like Matt Drudge to tell the world about Monica and the presidentially semen stained blue dress when the dominant media had been sitting on the story for weeks. No longer do all the like-thinking editors in the press decide what is and isn't distributed to the people. You or I can tell the WORLD anything, and there's not a thing any politico can do to stop it.

THAT is power. And it scares politicos. This power has NEVER in history belonged to so many! So they are going after the `net, hot and heavy. They are trying desperately to get SOME kind of regulation of the Internet that will stick, so that it can be extended.

EVERYTHING the government touches eventually ends up under it's domination. Jefferson wrote that the "natural way of things is for government to get more powerful" (paraphrase).

So, they go after regulating prOn (for the children, of course), then they go after those posting bomb plans, etc. Censors always start censoring those that most ordinary people find offensive. But it never ENDS there. The personal freedom-control Nazis always want more and more.

ANY kind of Internet censorship at all is just the thin edge of a wedge.

What I find pitiful is that so far, the only legal Internet censorship that hasn't been struck down by a court is that resulting from the DMCA... Thaks to Judge Kaplan and his MPAA financed retirement fund.