We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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This has ‘disaster’ printed all over it The three main parties are all deciding how they will kill off the last vestiges of freedom of the press in Britain.
Ed Miliband was hoping to sit down with David Cameron and Nick Clegg later on Tuesday or Wednesday to agree a historic new deal which would see newspapers regulated like the BBC.
We will know soon enough exactly how they will do this, but do it they will. And you can be sure they will present it as protecting freedom of the press.
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Yes when one gives up PRINCIPLES the backbone of freedom is broken – then everything else is details.
And none of the major party leaderships hold to principles in the realm of freedom of speech (or much else).
I am sure they’re just doing it to protect the kids. You wouldn’t want them to hear about UKIP, or other upsetting groups, would you? How can we ban Jihadists if we don’t also ban or regulate any speech that someone might be offended by? It’s not like there’s any Freedom of Speech amendment to be circumvented in Britain! Imagine how much better Britain will be when cartoons and comics are ‘regulated’. No more Dan Dare being violent to Venusians- that must have inspired aggression in juvenile minds!
Let them do it for, and to, the children!!!
I hope all three of them drown in their own vomit.
Sorry, there’s no point being polite about these cunts any longer.
The ominous “… like the BBC” is disturbing, in light of recent scandals at this august institution, reported and unreported, even a pro-regulation supporter should be worried.
The papers are a dying trade and they already present so much lies and state/leftist agit-prop that, like the tv, their freedom will be a small loss. If they have any balls all they have to do is get together and tell the political scum that they won’t accept or abide by any rules. And see what the publicity od sending plod to arrest journos and editors does for the scum of the state.
We must protect the Net, that is the game-changer that the scum want to supress.
Mr Ecks
Absolutely spot on. We must win the battle for the net, which is bound to start as soon as the newspapers are lost.
Back when I was “Lycrophon” at the University of York I can remember when most internet stuff (on the various boards – which is how we communicated back then) was libertarian.
Then (in the late 1990s) the left moved in – in massive (organised) force. The left are like a hive-mind – they all say the same things (and in the same way) and they act as a unit (and with the total backing of the educational system and so on – which they cite to “prove” their points).
The time of the libertarian internet has come – and gone.
Today even some of the people who call themselves “libertarians” just parrot the line of the hive-mind.
All problems are caused by “the rich”, “the corporations”, “the 1%” (and so on).
Perhaps the internet could only be largely libertarian before the “mainstream” (what Perry calls the metacontext) noticed it.
Now we are only strong in ghettos (such as this one) – indeed we should celebrate our ghettos as at least that gives us walls and a gate to defend.
If someone just puts a political matter into a search engine – the places they will be sent are leftist.
I remember Neil Cavato (Fox News and Fox Business) pointing out that if someone wanted to know about the Ryan plan (a hopelessly moderate effort to limit the growth of costs in Medicare) internet search engines would lead them to sites that were nearly all…….
Leftist.
Hostile.
And full of lies.
Is it any wonder that most people (and most intelligent people – the people who use the internet to try and find information, rather than just for porn) became hostile to the Ryan Plan?
The leftist domination of the education system and the meanstream media was not, at first, a feature of the internet. But it became so.
Although (as long as we stay in our ghettos) we can pretend to ourselves that this is not the case.
It is like being in Hillsdale and thinking that most universities are like the place (they are not).
Or watching a discussion show on Fox News – and thinking that ABC, CBS, NBS,…. are much the same (they are not).
Eventually the internet became part of the wide (leftist dominated) society – and its distinctive libertarian character was lost. Apart from on a few websites – such as this one.
There is one more factor…….
The internet zillionairs….
The Bill Gates, Steve Jobs….. (and on and on).
Many of these people (although not all of them) were both very good businessmen and highly creative.
However, when they (most NOT all of them) speak or write about political matters they become idiots.
The late Steve Jobs (held in such high honour by so many libertarians) was an example of this. When he spoke on political matters (and he did) his comments were absurd – full of errors, both of fact and of reasoning. And, sadly, he was the norm.
It was as if these young men had absorbed their political opinions at school and university (“eating all the shit” as a Russian saying has it) and taking it to be as factual as the lessons in computer science. Something to be “developed” (built upon), rather than fundementally REJECTED.
The fact that many of these people were college dropouts is beside the point – they aborbed the political atmosphere (the metacontext) just the same.
For some reason (and I do not know why) people who build up internet business enterprises are far more likely to be leftists than people who build up large business enterprises.
I keep hopeing that this will change.
For example, the head of Amazon was supposed to be roll back the state person.
But I do not see him spending serious money on movements to reduce taxes and government spending.
Yet he does give money (millions of Dollars) to establish government (as opposed to just private ceremonies) “Gay Marriage”.
Why?
Even if one believes in such government ceremonies, why are they a priority worth spending millions of Dollars campaigning for?
“Because the internet is about youth culture – and this sort of stuff is youth culture”.
Well that does not sound very good.
And I strongly suspect that someone who made their money developing oil and gas (the real good news story in the American economy in recent years – and the less expensive energy reason that industrial output has grown at 2%).
But can we expect West coast internet people to think more like oil and gas developers in Penn?
Perhaps – as the internet becomes more established (and internet businessmen stop thinking of themselves as young).
However, some long established industries are dominated by statist scumbags.
Banking springs to mind….
Of course the weird thing is that when the internet was dominated by libertarians it was young – yet all the stuff we wrote had NO EFFECT AT ALL on the people who became the internet zillionairs.
I suppose they were too busy working out how to make money from the internet, to read the stuff on the internet.
Fair enough.
Rather that it will be statist – on either left or right of the old spectrum.
So let’s change that.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with Mr Ecks here.
If government gets away with abridging freedom of speech in the papers, it has established a precedent – that the state has the right to oversee and govern speech in fora it does not own. That can then be broadened to the internet pretty easily. After all (they’ll argue), a journalist is a journalist whether he works for a paper and put his words into print, or whether he’s a “citizen journalist” and puts his words onto a website. And the law must apply equally to all, right?
Right?
~R~
In Australia
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2012/4/keith-windschuttle
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=11760
Sorry, pressed post too early.
The above are the only possible responses. Defying the new regulator will lead to, at least, contempt of court, if not some other charge. What will the political reaction be when the first publisher is dragged to prison for the offense of – publishing.
What politician will be willing to stand up and defend that?
“What politician will be willing to stand up and defend that?”
The charge won’t be ‘publishing’ though. The hive mind will have spent several months branding them as ‘extreme’, ‘full of hate’, etc REGARDLESS of what has been published. This will be the ‘reality’ as far as the public and the political class is concerned. All you will see and hear is “extremist nutters in court”.
Yes – and it may be civil court.
Remember all the parties (in spite of their supposed disagreement) are in favour of rigging the “damages” process.
Refuse to sign up to the scheme?
Fine – accept you will be sued in civil court (by the person you have attacked)and have to pay them crippleing damages.
Sign up for the scheme – and you will NOT have to pay anything like so much money.
“But Paul the idea of different people paying different amounts of damages for publishing the same stuff violates the rule of law”.
Trouble is that the establishment elite could not care less about the principles of the rule of law.