Try to express this opinion in France and you'll have an opportunity to see if your entire Eurotrib blogging history will save you from being labeled a Lepenist.
"There are certain parts of the fascist program - advocating genocide, committing overt discrimination, using or advocating violence as a political tool, military coup d'etats, etc. - that are and should be illegal"
The same holds for publications or broadcasts which would try the same. The same must hold for the internet. The size of the network is too much even for national authorities. Just like radio or TV, internet providers should have their number reduced and be strictly controlled as to the content passing by, because even an obligation to keep browsing history is not enough. In the end it is a technical issue. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
The same holds for publications or broadcasts which would try the same. The same must hold for the internet.
No, it should not, because the internet is not a broadcast medium. It is a peer-to-peer medium, not unlike the shady corner in your local biergarten. What you are proposing is roughly equivalent to demanding that every pub installs cameras, microphones and other devices that keep record of their patrons' movements and utterances.
Because, y'know, they might be selling drugs. Or planning a Nazi coupt d'etat.
Surely, if biergartens had been monitored in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi party could have been broken up before it seized power. Doesn't that justify permanent surveillance of all biergartens? No? Why not?
Just like radio or TV, internet providers should have their number reduced and be strictly controlled as to the content passing by, because even an obligation to keep browsing history is not enough.
You do realise that by reducing the number of ISPs and subjecting them to content filtering, you will make it much, much easier for existing media monopolies to crack down on independent reporting, right?
You are substantially describing a world in which the internet becomes an advanced version of cable TV. While that's great news for Murdoch, Bush, Sarko, Corruptioni and the rest of the fascist-lites we have running around in the broadcast media, I fail to see how it would be of any value to society as a whole.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
