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

You can see it now...

[MosesJones]

Judge: So who ordered you to perform this research ?

PhD: Err... the US Goverment

Judge: Are you aware that this breaks the DMCA ?

PhD: Not really, I mean the goverment asked me to do this, they wouldn't ask me to break the law would they ?

Judge: US Goverment did you ask this PhD student to break the law ?

US Goverment: I've never heard anything so ridiculous when would we ever do that ?

Judge: Nixon ?

USG: Apart from then

Judge: Iran-Contra ?

USG: Apart from then .... continue for two hours

USG: Anyway the Goverment never got convicted then, so that means we have a precedent...

Judge: Good point, Mr PhD Student I sentence you to 10 years in prison for violating the DMCA and 5 years for mis-use of federal funds.

PhD: ?!

USG: Nice touch.

True, for if there is no sin to resist

[Adam Rightmann]

what does that say about one's state of grace? As a Catholic, I recognize the sinfulness of pornography (in most cases), yet, when I refuse to succumb to the lure of such lurid depictions, I triump over sin. I would not have that opportunity if my interent connection was filtered, and I would eventually have a weakened moral system.

The Vatican has one of the world's great collections of erotica (for research purposes), and you would be very hard pressed to find a more moral, less sinful group of men in the world.

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

[elmegil]

I am tempted daily by women, booze & drugs, but my wife makes sure that she follows through with her promises. :).

Re:Do I Need To Say It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our terrorists are "freedom fighters" dumb-dumb. If you can't see the difference, then you are obviously unsuited for an American political career.

Re:Um...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, I'm worried about this too.

We have to keep the children from finding out about sex, or they will just make more children.

Soon the entire world will be overrun with the annoying little buggers.

In general, it's pretty damn important that we quickly find a robust technology to allow our government to keep people from looking at stuff God doesn't want them to look at while at the same time preventing the governments of Satan from keeping other people from looking at the things Satan doesn't want them to look at. The easiest thing would be if we could develop Artificial Intelligence that was capable of distinguishing Godly data from data that comes from Satan.

also confusing

[Fjord]

How about forbidding American corporations from trading censorware goods or services to these "repressive governments," wouldn't that be a good start?

Sure. Let's fight repression with repression. It'll be like a war for peace.

Hypocritical

[Anonymous Coward]

> How about forbidding American corporations from
> trading censorware goods or services to these
> "repressive governments," wouldn't that be a good
> start?

Maybe we should start with encryption software...wait a minute...