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Not for nothing, but most people of that mindset don't believe that the government is inherently bad, but that government powers should be closely and judicious
by bmelton 10y ago
Not for nothing, but most people of that mindset don't believe that the government is inherently bad, but that government powers should be closely and judiciously kept to a minimum to prevent it being used for bad.
There's a difference there, but like most arguments on the internet, the nuance tends to get lost in the retelling.
Regarding net neutrality, if memory serves correctly, it was but a few short weeks after the passage of NN that somebody was wanting to leverage the FCC's new powers to censor ISIS off of the internet. Wheeler, being a good guy, connoted that they didn't have that authority, and that even if it could be construed that they did, he was disinclined to exert it and give credence to the argument that they did have that power.
All of that was done basically in "the right way", but given the wild swings in administration changes, who's to say that some other head of the FCC wouldn't have been inclined to leverage the power that they might now have for exactly that reason? Are we sure that the courts would agree that NN doesn't give the FCC the right to censor individual websites? Are we sure that the courts of tomorrow won't?
Yes, I know that this is a slippery slope argument, and I understand the inherent pitfalls therein, but that doesn't change the fact that power can be used maliciously, and for some of us, the question of whether or not the problem is worth potentially sacrificing much larger swaths of the first amendment falls differently than for others. I personally don't fault any individual for whichever way they've decided, as there are possible curtilages of free speech on either side of the coin, but I'd like us to agree that being suspicious of vesting power unto an agency otherwise wholly unaccountable to the public is perhaps not the dumbest thing that Americans do.
- intended 10y agoCould you explain who this was, and how ISIS and NN intersected? This seems like an...odd argument. NN is protecting business as usual, so using NN to censor isis is kinda novel.
- bmelton 10y agoI originally heard it while watching CSPAN, but I'm glad to be able to find a source that at least confirms the high points: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/17/one-gop-lawmakers-plan-to-stop-isis-censor-the-internet/?utm_term=.f5ab9d51c6f4 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/11/17...