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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.)
Troll.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
"if we can subsidize murder in other countries when it suits us "
That's called politics dummy.
Your appreciation of politics is either misinformed, excessively cynical, or downright scary.
Politics is taking care of your interests, of course. Everyone has a right to do that. Things even go over the top once in a while and people die, sure.
Murder as a national policy rebounds on the ones who originate it. First aggression rebounds. It instantly justifies any action whatsoever which is taken against the aggressor, purely in the name of self-defence.
The Nazis were arguably taking care of Germany's interests in annexing the Sudetenland, in invading Poland, in creating fortress Europe and in trying to conquer Russia. Every step was, after all, just politics and was in the long term interest of the German people.
If you can't spot the problem there, then there may be no hope for you.
LawMeme points out a glaring loophole in the bill.
I can tell you vote Republican (if you're even old enough).
The poster wasn't talking about soldiers, but US funded death squads in Central America during the 80's, the US supplying Iraq with chemical weapons in the 80's, selling arms to Iran in the 80's, assassinating a democratically elected leader in Chile in 1973, etc. The United States does not have a real solid history to stand on when preaching to the rest of the world about terrorists.