A Review Board Scanning The Internet for materials that run afoul of their rules may not be all that far off.
Yes indeed, sooner or later our Internet freedom will be lost. Oppressors will use many excuses to rationalize their crackdown. Many are convinced that we are all being spied upon via our emails, cell phones, electronic appliances, etc. Perhaps they are correct. Even if they are not, what the leading Democrat on the FEC wishes to do will effectively kill the free speech of bloggers, you tube users, and could very well go much further.
Make no mistake, our Internet freedom will soon be on par with those of China and Iran.
From Fox News:
The Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission warned Monday that his colleagues are flirting with the creation of a “government review board” to regulate videos posted on the Internet, and urged the government to keep its “hands off.”
The warning comes after the commission revealed late Friday that it had come close to pursuing a case against a group for posting free YouTube videos before the 2012 election without filing financial forms. The top Democrat on the commission, Vice Chairwoman Ann Ravel, also called for looking at possibly regulating political Internet videos next year.
This would be uncharted territory, as the FEC largely has left free Internet videos alone for years.
Chairman Lee Goodman, a Republican who likely will hand the reins of the commission over to Ravel next year, said Monday that if the FEC goes down this road, it could effectively lead to a “review board” scanning the Internet for material that runs afoul of their rules.
“There are hundreds of thousands of blogs, websites, podcasts, webcasts, and I can’t image a regulatory regime where the federal government starts culling websites and YouTube posts on a daily basis to identify those that might not have registered and reported their expenditures,” Goodman told Fox News. “It really is a specter of a government review board culling the Internet daily. … I don’t know how we could begin to regulate all the hundreds of thousands of political commentaries online.”
It’s unclear whether Ravel’s intention is to focus solely on recognized political groups and declared candidates, or also everyday Americans who freely post their political sentiments in videos online. continue
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