The Internet is NOT for sale to the highest bidder. YET.

[Sibling Chatty]

Bill Moyers (also on Wednesday night on PBS in the US, on this topic this week) has a bit to say about  the future of the internet.

The Internet is revolutionary because it is the most democratic of media. All you need to join the revolution is a computer and a connection. We don't just watch; we participate, collaborate and create. Unlike television, radio and cable, whose hirelings create content aimed at us for their own reasons, with the Internet every citizen is potentially a producer. The conversation of democracy belongs to us.

That wide-open access is the founding principle of the Internet, but it may be slipping through our fingers. How ironic if it should pass irretrievably into history here, at the very dawn of the Internet Age.

[The Black Spot]

The European Union is also trying to stick its nose into where it isn't wanted:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2407359,00.html

They say they want to protect us from "Hate Speech" (very Orwellian sounding) and the like. I think that it's paranoia from not having control. They'll keep chipping away at the net.

All for our own good of course.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There are two issues here that are interrelated:

Net Neutrality (the owners of certain pipes taxing or filtering content), and Freedom of
Speech (do we want to actively prevent certain speech that we don't like like child porn and hateful speech?*).

Speech is affected indirectly on the first ("We are sorry but Comcast doesn't talk to Google anymore, may I interest you in our [filtered] search engine...?"), and the techniques from the one can be use for the other.

Is there a slippery slope in the 1st, the 2nd or both?
----
* This is a topic in itself when you see the kind of cultural filtering of content in muslim nations, just to name an example.

[Griffin NoName]

Freedom of Speech cannot include suppression of anything. If it does, it's not Freedom of Speech.

As with Human Rights, we seem to have fallen into a world of polarity.....

We seem to be unable to define harm adequately and no one wants censorship. Back to the Old Philosophers?