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Nancy Pelosi vs. the Internet
selil writes "A story popped up on the ChicagoBoyz Blog. It says 'Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who would like very much to reimpose the old, so-called, "Fairness Doctrine" that once censored conservative opinion on television and radio broadcasting, is scheming to impose rules barring any member of Congress from posting opinions on any internet site without first obtaining prior approval from the Democratic leadership of Congress. No blogs, twitter, online forums — nothing.'"
Here's a direct link to the letter in question.
This is a regulation of HOUSE MEMBERS usage of the Internet - not the general public. Look at the linked letter: http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF
The AS ASS above thinks that the Dems are manipulating the general public's right to free political speech, he is dead wrong.
The limits are to be placed upon Members of Congress and their staff and merely require that the material is vetted (I approved this ....) and that limitation of the staff's right to engage in political speech is included, too (it already is restricted - See, the Hatch Act, http://www.osc.gov/hatchact.htm ). RTFA.
From the PDF of the letter in question:
"Please note that nothing in these recommendations should b e construed as a recommendation to change the current House rules and regulations governing the content of official communications."
This is an attempt to deal with technical issues and update existing House rules to keep up with technology. There's a lot of FUD in the article summary and in TFA.
Here is the actual letter they reference: http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF
I'm sorry, but I don't understand how they can draw those conclusions from the source they reference. And I don't see anything about Pelosi. The letter seems to say that people can post stuff on outside servers, provided there is a way of verifying it really came from who it says its from. Whoah! Scandal!
Why is Slashdot posting links to crazy right wing/libertartian conspiracy theories? This is stupid.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I've read the PDF about the *suggested* changes.
Currently there are rules governing the posting of *official* House of Reps material which includes the requirement that such posts are done in the house.gov domain.
The suggested change allows that material to be hosted on external servers subject to the *existing rules*.
It says *nothing* about prohibiting posting of opinions by house members on any web site. Nothing.
Maybe a less "spinny" version would be in order? Basically, it's letter stating that House members should be allowed to use non house.gov areas to post things. But in order to use non house.gov resources, the materials and the site in question has to be vetted by a committee.
It sounds more innocuous the way I spelled it out, but the end result is the same. A committee would have to give prior approval to anything that appears on a non-official site, and approve the site.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Here is the letter linked as "evidence" of this "censorship" policy:
http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF.
Seems to me that it's referring to "official" House media... that is, representative of The House. Makes sense that if something's supposed to represent the body it ought to be approved by the majority, Democratic, Republican, or whoever.
Any other sources that indicate that congress is being gagged in their personal speech?
More Twoson than Cupertino
The sites will be vetted to prove that it is secure, that not just anyone can post video "from teh US congrass." Horrors. And it mentions nothing about Nancy Pelosi.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The letter is avialable here
#1 - This is only concerning official House communications...not informal messages from House members.
#2 - The letter is actually requesting to open up external sites (like Youtube) for official House communications since the current house.gov website doesn't meet the needs.
#3 - The restrictions requested ask for similar standing on external sites as they have on house.gov. In other words, offical communication can't be posted along side an Obama banner ad.
ÕÕ
Remember Al & Tipper Gore's charge against "bad lyrics" in 1985?
Remember Al Gore and his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, threat to impose forms of state censorship on the film, music and video games industries should they win the November election in 2000?
Remember Senator John D. Rockefeller's (D-W.Va) "Indecent and Gratuitous and Excessively Violent Programming Control Act." of 2005?
Remember Hilary Clinton taking a public stand in favor of shielding children from game and other animation content that she deems inappropriate in 2007?
The republicans arent the only ones taking away your rights...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Quote One:
Bill Ruder, an assistant secretary of commerce under President Kennedy, noted, "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters in the hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue."
Quote Two:
In a confidential report to the DNC, Martin Firestone, a Washington attorney and former FCC staffer, explained,
"The right-wingers operate on a strictly cash basis and it is for this reason that they are carried by so many small stations. Were our efforts to be continued on a year-round basis, we would find that many of these stations would consider the broadcasts of these programs bothersome and burdensome (especially if they are ultimately required to give us free time) and would start dropping the programs from their broadcast schedule."
https://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-270.html
Cited.
Honestly, where in this link, embedded in the article, say anything about limiting members' capabilities to discuss anything?
http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/Capuano_letter.PDF
All the recommendations say is that members of the House should find suitable external sites to host their video content and try to maintain a modicum of their ethics by trying to find sites that don't have advertisements that will be associated with the video content.
Nowhere do the recommendations suggest members of the House can't speak with their constituents or say what they want to. It only recommends that they use "official" house.gov channels to do so.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Judges 9:8
While I agree with your general point about the marginalization of third parties, I think this statement of yours is based on an insufficient understanding of the history of the Fairness Doctrine:
What a load of horse shit. If the "liberals" said domething they had to counter it with a "conservative" stance. Apparently the submitter thinks it's OK to censor Dems but not Repubs
What led to the submitter summary was this: Basically, virtually all talk show hosts capable of garnering an audience were conservative. So if a radio station wanted to have one of these guys, they'd have to have a liberal respond. At risk of sounding trollish (but this is just the history) the liberal response would be boring and lose listeners.
Again, I'm not trying to troll: the fact that conservatives had more mass appeal on radio could just as well be due to their oversimplification of the issues.
The upshot is, because radio shows couldn't justify the loss of listeners through the liberal response, via the gain through the conservative talk show hosts, the result of the Fairness Doctrine was much more detrimental to conservatives.
So yes, in theory it applies equally, but as the saying goes, "The law forbids the rich from sleeping under bridges, just the same as it does the poor."
See: any history of the Fairness Doctrine.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Have you read the letter? The summary and its source are utter bullshit. The letter is about figuring out how to allow House members to post official videos on their official pages without going over their disk space quotas, while still conforming to existing regulations on how a Member may present official documents.
Pelosi has nothing to do with this. Censorship has nothing to do with this.
These scare tactics work for and on conservatives so very well.
Wow.
And if you look at Cogresses approval numbers, which are in the single digits, it's obvious that's it's not just republicans or conservatives that are unhappy.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!