Recently my colleague Paul McNamara wrote in his Buzzblog about yet another case of the Internet being demonized, and the piece generated quite a bit of feedback.
Buzz wrote about the story of a Houston attorney, Jason Itkin, who is representing four families whose underage daughters were sexually abused after meeting men they encountered on MySpace. Itkin and the complainants are suing not only MySpace but also its parent, News Corp., for not protecting their children.
The insanity of this suit is what got Paul’s readers’ juices flowing, and the unanimous consensus was the blindingly obvious conclusion: Why weren’t the parents watching out for their children?
With a bit of luck the case will get dismissed and the lawyer will get bupkis.
But will this be the end of bogus legal attacks on how we use Internet services? No, because it’s guaranteed that other misguided individuals aided by opportunistic lawyers will want somebody else to be responsible for their online negligence, gullibility or downright stupidity.
In terms of the sheer waste of time and money involved, this sorry tale is bad enough, but what’s really awful is that the demonizing of the Internet,which has been going on since it became hot, has recently become increasingly a stalking horse for politicians.
In part, it is obvious why this is so: The Internet is a mirror of our culture but with the unique attributes of anonymity, immediacy and low-cost access enabling a new level of freedom of speech. This makes the ‘Net a powerful promoter of egalitarianism – the doctrine that equality ought to prevail throughout society – which, of course, makes most politicians pretty nervous.
That’s not to say politicians haven’t recognized and embraced the potential of the Internet; for example, consider John Kerry’s success raising campaign funds online in ’04, the recent rash of presidential hopefuls using the Web to announce their candidacy for the ’08 election, and senators and representatives communicating with their constituents by e-mail.
Despite this apparent wave of acceptance it seems the Internet also provides far more freedom of expression for more people than some politicians would like. This is obvious from the way that the “War on Terror” has become the platform from which the conclusion has been derived that free speech is dangerous. In October last year Michael Chertoff, U.S. Homeland Security secretary, speaking at Harvard Law School’s Ames Courtroom, argued that the consequences of dismantling the Bill of Rights would “have to be measured with real-world decisions when deciding on matters that deal with life or death.”
A few days later at a meeting of the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, Chertoff said: “We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet. . . . They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else, and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination.”
This is the kind of “thinking” that leads to the recent remarkably close approval (55 to 43) of an amendment to remove a section of a bill that would have required bloggers with audiences of more than 500 to register with and report quarterly to the government or face civil penalties and as many as 10 years in prison.
Had this bill passed as originally structured we would have witnessed a serious blow to our freedom of expression. What worries me is that between the politicians and lawyers there’s enough juice to damage not only the ‘Net but the Bill of Rights as well. The question is, do we care enough to prevent this from happening? We need to make sure that when politicians and lawyers get the ‘Net in their sights, we speak up and express our outrage.
Whatever outrage you have left, tell me at back_spin@gibbs.com.
