Democratic Senator Ron Wyden is trying to take online censorship to a new level by drafting a bill that will enforce “consequences” for platforms that refuse to remove people like Alex Jones.
In an interview with Recode, Wyden, the senior U.S. Senator from Oregon, said that platforms should be punished for hosting content that he deems to go against “common decency”.
N.B.: if you want to read the transcript of the podcast this is the link to Recode: https://www.recode.net/2018/8/22/17765668/ron-wyden-senator-recode-decode-kara-swisher-podcast-transcript
From the podcast:
“I think what the Alex Jones case shows, we’re gonna really be looking at what the consequences are for just leaving common decency in the dust,” said Wyden.
“What I’m gonna be trying to do in my legislation is to really lay out what the consequences are when somebody who is a bad actor, somebody who really doesn’t meet the decency principles that reflect our values, if that bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency, I think you gotta have a way to make sure that stuff is taken down,” he added.
Of course, Wyden’s definition of what is ‘indecent’ is wide open to interpretation and will obviously be skewed by political bias. – Infowars Article quote
https://www.infowars.com/senator-ron-wyden-demands-consequences-for-platforms-that-dont-remove-people-like-alex-jones/
First, let me make it clear that I’m not in any way a fan of Alex Jones. He is loud-mouthed, frequently a ridiculous blowhard, somewhat paranoid, and is repeatedly inaccurate as well as very, very wrong about the things he says. He makes stuff up, just like his leftist opponents do, because it draws a crowd and pays his bills.
That said, the US Constitution is clear on the subject of freedom of speech in Article the 3rd and also in the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. If you haven’t read the Constitution or its Amendments in a while, take the time to review them. Just because something was banned in Boston by a committee of descendants of the Puritans, it does not mean it was in any way bad for you. Imagine, if you will, Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’ and ‘A Farewell to Arms’ being banned. “A Farewell to Arms” is a war novel, relating his experiences in WWI written after he left the Army. There is nothing remotely indecent in them, but the Bostonians who made up the Boston Watch and Ward Society decided they should be banned in the 1930s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston
Wyden can write up all the bills and legislation he wants to but if they violate the Law of the Land, he’s wasting his time. He ought to know that. What if someone decides that he doesn’t like Wyden’s speeches and platform and wants him off the air and shut out of the internet. Oh, well, then the shoe is decidedly on the other foot, isn’t it?
If Wyden is so very concerned about common decency, then why isn’t he concerned about the rampant abuse called kiddie porn on the internet? Why? Why is his focus on a loudmouthed dipstick like Alex Jones?
I have seen a lot of stuff on the internet that I find offensive and no, I don’t go back to it because it is spawned by deranged people who are so desperate for attention that they will do anything to get it. This is the curse of the internet.
The flipside of that is that no one is forcing you to watch it or read it or listen to it. Period.
Wyden and anyone else complaining along with him are missing the real point: you don’t have the right to tell Alex Jones or any of the other loud-mouthed, paranoid, delusional idiots – including you and your friends, Wyden – that they don’t have the right to say what they want to. If I don’t like what you say, Wyden, would you like it if I taped YOUR big, fat, stupid, greedy mouth shut? Naw, I didn’t think so.
If it’s put on me, then it must needs be likewise put on thee.
You want to get rid of these people whose ideas you don’t like, and don’t want to hear? Don’t send them money. Don’t buy their snake oil products that they sell online and on the air. Don’t tune to their channels. Shut them off if they annoy you. Forget where you found them the first time. It is that simple.
I repeat, and will do so ad infinitum: no one is forcing you to listen to those people.
What part of that is so difficult to understand? You want common decency back, Wyden? Then stop being a self-centered, attention whoring politician. Leave politics and live like the rest of us do, you self-important twit. Get a real job where you’re paying taxes into the tax pool like we do instead of sponging off taxpayers. Stop saying ‘gonna’ and ‘gotta’. Your sloppy speech habits are just that – sloppy. They don’t make you one of We, the People. Quit faking it. You’re a politician and politicians are drek – a dime a dozen. Oh, you don’t like that? Tough bananas, fella. Free speech.
Frankly, the only way to not have to listen to people whose idiotic notions conflict with your own idiotic notions is to hit the “OFF” switch. I do not, and never will, understand why that is so difficult for some people to do that – just shut it off.
I will close this with this quote from the 1962 hearing in Chicago regarding whether or not Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” was obscene and should be banned from US bookstores. The judge was Samuel B. Epstein.
“Let the parents control the reading matter of their children; let the tastes of the readers determine what they may or may not read; let each reader be his own censor; but let not the government or the courts dictate the reading matter of a free people. The constitutional right to freedom of speech and press should be jealously guarded by the courts.” http://evergreenreview.com/read/profiles-in-censorship-barney-rosset/
The italics are mine.
Judge Epstein endured condemnation for his decision, and the Illinois Supreme Court reversed it, but by then it mattered very little. Shortly after Judge Epstein’s decision, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the publisher.
