Senate Bill to Subsidize Anti-Censorware Research

Senators Wyden (D-Ore.) and Kyl (R-Ariz.) introduced the Global Internet Freedom Act earlier this month, setting aside $60 million over two years "to develop and deploy technologies to defeat Internet jamming and censorship." Of course they don't mean libraries and schools in this country -- they're talking about countries like China, as Kyl et al. explain in a National Review article a few days ago. I guess it wasn't confusing enough to (1) subsidize censorware and (2) criminalize researching it -- we also need to (3) subsidize researching it. How about forbidding American corporations from trading censorware goods or services to these "repressive governments," wouldn't that be a good start? Update: 10/30 03:37 GMT by J : Here's the Wired story from early this month on the version that was introduced in the House.

(Sen. Wyden also teamed up last month with Sen. Cox (R-Calif.) on a little bitty resolution standing up for your fair use rights before the tank parade of the DMCA.)

Comments

finally

[tps12]

It's about time that the government steps in to protect us from the corporations and right-wing Christians who'd like to own our souls and shield us from all the "evil" pornography (fourth ring of hell reserved for Slashdotters?). I am a hard-core capitalist, but even I can recognize a market failure when I see one. Just as overfishing once lead to mass unemployment and starvation in the Northeast US, the greed of a few supercorporations (the likes of which were never conceived of by the founders of our nation) and the fiery rhetoric of a few rabid Christians have turned us into slaves of exploitative technology. And people are too stupid to provide a good market for anti-censorware products, so we're screwed. This research should set things right again.

Just a quick question?

[SquierStrat]

Where did the founding fathers mention that it is the government's job to spend money to subsidize research? Really, this all sounds wasteful of taxpayer dollars that could be better spent uh I don't know, how about just not spending it? Or maybe paying back some of the massive debt?

China's just trying to goad us

[The Evil Couch]

into slashdotting their servers so that their entire nation's access to the internet drops and they don't have to worry about people looking up stuff they don't want them to.

Re:True, for if there is no sin to resist

[pyite]

Moral, HAH. I think there's only one quote appropriate in this instance: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. " Please, spare us from your Catholic goody-goodyness. Christendom has committed more atrocities as a whole than any other group of people.