Free Flow of Information Act
p2p news / p2pnet:- Good news for Apple boss Steve Jobs.
Senator Richard Lugar is touting “something he calls the Free Flow of Information Act of 2005,” says Dana Blankenhorn on Corante.
Under it, “journalists” would get source protection, but some would be more equal than others and, “Those who work for institutions (a dwindling proportion of the whole) would get the right to protect their sources,” he says.
“The rest – independents, bloggers, etc – would get no protection. In other words, the First Amendment protections of corporate journalism would be expanded, and the rest of us – the pamphleteers, the true heirs of Tom Paine – would be told to pound sand.”
This fits in nicely with Steve Jobs’ contention that some media outlets are fair game if they’ve done something he doesn’t like, while others should be more or less allowed to report whatever they like with impunity
Blankenhorn says the only real protection US citizens have comes under the First Amendment: the right to fight for rights.
“Rights are not given,” he declares. “They are seized” and to seize them, “people have to stand up and demand rights. They have to be willing to suffer in order to expand rights.
“Many bloggers have suffered greviously in these last few years for their right to speak. Some have been threatened with lawsuits. Others have been fired from jobs. Still others have been SLAPPed down. The right to write anonymously, as James Madison did in the Federalist Papers, is under unprecedented attack by corporate interests.
“The Internet has brought many things to a head. Add this to the list.
“But I for one intend to fight for my right to speak and write as I choose. Will you?”
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
Corante – Corante is Not Second Class Journalism, October 12, 2005
allowed to report – New Apple Asteroid trouble, September 13, 2005
October 13th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
It should read “The Freedom of Corporate information act.”
My question is, what constitutes a legitimate news source? would a reporter in a small town newspaper with a circulation of a few thousand that distributes once a week qualify? or would that reporter be thrown in jail? What if I were to go to journalism school and work at the New York Times. Then as a professional reporter I decided to start an independent online newspaper? would I be covered then?
I can see many lawsuits coming along challanging this law.
October 13th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
This is one reason why I encourage blog site operators to regularly purge their log files. If the log information is not there, then the website operator cannot be force to turn them over to the cartel-government alliance. How often are p2pnet.net logs purged? If they are not, then it is something Jon might consider doing for everyone’s protection (including his).
October 13th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
“This fits in nicely with Steve Jobs’ contention that some media outlets are fair game if they’ve done something he doesn’t like, while others should be more or less allowed to report whatever they like with impunity”
don’t you mean allowed to report whatever they have been paid to report?
October 13th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
What is a journalist?
- Somebody who works for a journal
- A freelance who sells their articles to journals
- A freelance who gives their work to a journal.
- A freelance who publishes their own journal.
And for my next question.
- What is a journal?
This sounds like another misguided law designed to protect a dinosaur industry with an outdatd business model. And we know all about those.
October 13th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Wotcha Julian:
The term journalist, “carries a connotation or expectation of professionalism in reporting” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist].
Significant numbers of the people writing for the lamescream media fail miserably to qualify under the above definition. So if Lugar’s Act is taken seriously, very few of the scribes now reporting for the traditional print and electronic press on p2p, file sharing, and so on, would be protected.
That, in turn, means the organs they work for would be sued about every ten seconds by all kinds of entities, resulting in their inevitable collapse.
Roll on the Lugar Act ; )
October 13th, 2005 at 5:25 pm
I don’t disagree Jon, but I would say that the word professionalism is open to interpretation. To a judge the difference between a professional and an amature may be as simple as getting paid vs. not. As to “legitimate news source”… There’s a moving target if I ever heard of one. All other issues aside, it’s clear what the intention of this proposed piece of sham lawmaking is. There is no debate there.
October 13th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
Per this story. Jon, I deeply appreciate that p2pnet allows anonymous posting. It is becoming a rare thing on the net these days. It would not surprise me at all to see the “powers that be” attempt to crack down on this practice. Keep it up as long as you are allowed Jon and as another poster suggested, purge those log files…
October 13th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
— as long as you are allowed —
About the only thing that’ll change with anonymous comment posts will the the removal of the Anonymous Coward tag. It was never meant to be taken seriously, but I’m constantly surprised by how many people are offended by it, particularly since it doesn’t show up on the actual site ; )
Cheers!
October 13th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
Am I way off base in thinking that the multi-national corporations who intend to control EVERYTHING might possibly turn loose their dogs (read “paid for politicians”) on sites that allow anonymous posting, forcing them (the sites) to in turn force posters to register personal info so that posters who include libelous, slanderous, or any other comments they [the above mentioned corps] don’t like can be indentified and prosecuted, or should I say persecuted?
Sorry about the run on sentence…
Or am I laboring under a delusion (yet another delusion?…) that my anonymous posts on p2pnet are not actually anonymous? Yes, I wear a tin foil hat on a regular basis…
P.S. The Anonymous Coward tag never bothered me one bit.
October 13th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
You’re in no danger. You’re anonymous ;P
p2pnet has several regular posters who definitely don’t want their personal details revealed. Right Morg?
And what about me? I’m not anonymous. heh.
Cheers!
Jon
October 13th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
…and I’m another that doesn’t wish to be identified. Honestly, being under the idea that there will come a day when it is demanded that folks using the internet be identified, I have made mention before that I won’t post under my login, even though I have one.
Thoughts put into words are either worthy on their own merit or they are not. i have no wish that my id be associated with my posts as some sort of container for the reader to judge whether to read it or not.
While I don’t think that tin foil hats fit my head size, still why wish later what you can do something about today? For those sites that require id to register, normally I don’t give them what they need. I use other services that pass the data through to my email without having to actually give that correct address. This may not be a permanent solution to guarding ones privacy; still it is better than the alternative to my line of thinking. Especially with the theme of this article bringing out what has already been set up. Several webmasters and hosts have already had a taste of being demanded to reveal sources and the results of failing to do so. Since there is no protection for those that write what they feel in what isn’t recognised as a protected institution, those who do freely express their thoughts are liable in the worse sort of way.
Increasingly we are seeing what one regular poster here points to, that of the police state.
October 14th, 2005 at 12:07 am
Senator Richard Lugar is touting “something he calls the Free Flow of Information Act of 2005,”
Perhaps Senator Lugar has never heard that the Supreme Court has has ruled that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment in a 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, which reads:
“…Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society….”.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
October 14th, 2005 at 11:31 am
Just don’t keep them in the first place, or keep a rolling window of the previous 24 hours, in case there is a technical problem they are needed to solve, and then purge them.
October 14th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
You can be anonymous in many ways…. Put ficticious name or no name on your writings. Ask others, such as a journalist, not to put your name on the information.
Then, very clearly, the quoted Supreme Court opinion is a protection journalists against being forced to name their sources, for the same reasons given on the court’s opinion, namely,
“Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . ..”
Then why all the fuzz?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com