Corporate radio and television is a wonderland for idiotic yuppies that love to hear the wise words of their government masters. There are hundreds of channels and stations but nothing on. There’s no programming to assist independent thinking or cultivate a sense of rebellion or free will. Just the same pabulum over and over again that pulls the blinders over your eyes to keep you from seeing the full spectrum of political, spiritual or economic analysis.
You go to the Internet to get news, music, entertainment and writing that you cannot get anywhere else. The information available is infinite, untouched by the marker of the government censor and is not regulated; the libertarian’s dream. Everything is decentralized, does not need central planners to guide information in anyway and presents views outside of the establishment paradigms. Where else can you get real conservative and libertarian analysis at the tip of your fingers?
The Internet’s inherent decentralization aids anti-establishmentarians and iconoclasts thus making it a threat to governments everywhere. Everywhere from Communist China, Great Britain to even the United States of America there is a widespread panic among governments to clamp down on the Internet before widespread anti-government resistance reaches critical mass.
The most blaring case is the edict from the FCC that would impose censorship upon the Internet through new “net neutrality” boondoggle. The FCC is looking to regulate content on the Internet and cable television under the guise of “ consumer protection”.
To fully understand what is going on, it is important to take a look at the history of the FCC.
Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934 and created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate all non-governmental use of the public airwaves. This included radio signals and later television broadcast signals. The original purpose of the FCC was to regulate the airwaves so that there were not competing stations on the same band frequencies causing interference and making the stations unlistenable.
Like any governmental organization, it grew way beyond its originals boundaries and became the massive bureaucrat hang out it is today.
The FCC only regulated broadcast licenses and kept other transmitters from broadcasting on the same frequency as others. Since they controlled station licensing and signal regulation they could move over to content regulation as well. If a station had content the bureaucrats at the FCC found objectionable they could fine that station or not renew its broadcast license.
This had the unintended consequence of homogenizing content over broadcast television and radio. No programming on mass media was intellectually stimulating and kept everything bland and non-offensive.
Then cable television came and broke all the rules. The content was transmitted through private cable wires and was not under the iron grip of FCC rule. You could have content that had words the FCC did not allow (George Carlin’s famous bit comes to mind.) and challenging programming was able to thrive on HBO and Showtime.
But this format was still limiting. You could not start your own cable channel unless you had a spare couple of million dollars burning a hole in your pocket and connections in the advertising business. Content and individual thought was still controlled by a small cadre of intellectual gatekeepers.
Then the Internet became a widespread phenomenon among the general public and completely democratized the transmission of information and entertainment. There were no gatekeepers and no over-reaching government organization telling everyone what’s what. If you have views that are beyond the mainstream or have a voice that needs to be heard the Internet is for you and you can have a site for free or for a nominal fee.
Under the FCC’s new regulatory scheme, cloaked in the language of protection, the Federal Government would mandate that your cable box be used as a “broadband gateway device”. To cut away the government speak, it means your cable box would control access to your TV, phone and Internet.
This is a dangerous precedent to set on many levels. You would be forced to buy a box that the government approves of. This would open the door for the FCC to both monitor and censor Internet content. If they have all Internet data going through cable boxes, there is nothing that says the FCC cannot step in and mandate certain sites with a distinctly anti-government bent be blocked through programming on your cable box. These boxes would be the wolves in sheep’s clothing of Internet information blockage. You would pay rates that the government sets and never mind that your phone conversations and cable televisions shows would now be under the regulatory guise of the government.
Surf through the dial on your radio or flip through the major television stations. All you would see is homogenized programming that is barely tolerable for anyone with discerning taste. Or you can hark back to the good old days of the last decade when Janet Jackson’s breast slipped out of her tight leather suit on national television and her breast was accidentally partially exposed with a star shaped piece of jewelry covering her nipple. It sounds R rated for sure, but nothing that would corrupt children. But no, the hysteria from the media was loud and the FCC was threatening fines and rolling heads. If you want to have that happen on the Internet, be my guest and support more government regulations on it.
Governments feel the need to regulate the flow of information because they know if the actions they partake in are shown the light of day their air of magic will be lost and their evil constructs burnt to the ground. They hate the Internet because they have no control of the flow of information through it. Their evil plans are exposed and they do not like it. Alternative news and commentary is the antidote to oppressive government. That is why they feel they must destroy it.
Cable and broadcast news are not an alternative to the Internet. They still have their masters and are answerable to their government masters. The FCC will shut down the greatest tool in the message of liberty since the Gutenberg printing press. This cannot be allowed.
If the government gets its way, the Internet will be much like television news in that it spews a lot of noise with lots of options, but ultimately nothing’s going on. Sit es like the one you are reading now will just be dust in the wind, while idiot havens like TMZ and the Huffington Post will reign supreme. Imagine, a world where your only source of information is MSNBC and the Huffington Post. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem like a world I want to live in.
I want to hear about how the world really is. I don’t give a hoot if Lindsey Lohan is getting piss drunk and flashing her snatch in a nightclub. I hope you feel the same way.
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