They're at it again.
On Thursday Verizon Communications said it will stop offering its customers access to a whole slew of Usenet discussion areas. I'm one of those customers. When I signed up Usenet, all of it, was part of the package. Now Verizon has taken away thousands of groups just because New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, claimed that that's where all the child porn was. First question is, obviously, how did he know unless he's been there, and even viewing child porn is an offense, so one might ask why isn't Mr. Cuomo doing 90 and 9 in the crossbar hotel?
And, one might ask, what is Verizon going to do for me? Since I'm now paying for something I'm not getting I wonder if there might just be a little reduction in my bill. If you believe that might happen I have a bridge right her that I'd be glad to sell you.
But all of that is fluff.
The real issue is the ham handed way Verizon did the eliminating and the fact they caved in to the ravings of a New York politician at all.
What Verizon did was block all newsgroups with the prefix of "alt." which stands for alternative. There are thousands of them and by his own admission Cuomo said 88 of them sheltered kiddie porn. So let's argue that such trash is just that, trash, and that no one should ever look at it, be tempted to look at it or even know it's around. Fair enough. But let's look further at the newsgroups Verizon blocked: alt.british.drama is one. That basically knocks out all the Shakespeare buffs. Same with alt.french.drama. So much for Voltaire. Perhaps hardest to take is the censorship of alt.binaries.rock-n-roll.
From the outset of the Internet the people who were in it from the start knew as Gospel that All Information Wants to be Free. That includes bad information as well as the good. It is, by the way, also the creed of the good librarian.
It's a slippery slope folks.
Usenet is a part of the Internet that's been there from the beginning, but it's little known and doesn't have a large and vocal constituency. That's why Cuomo and his ilk will probably get away with this act of censorship. Too bad there isn't a stiff penalty for committing an act of censorship, but that's a whole other blog.
How much do you want to bet that one day when we wake up and find our internet choices to be limited to about those of, say, China we'll find that it happened because politicians and their corporate handmaidens like Verizon just chipped and nibbled away bit by bit until all that was left was what they found to be acceptable.
Somehow or other this strikes me as despicable. If I were French I'd be crying, "to the barricades" which is a nice way of letting the establishment know the people aren't happy, what with their burning torches and glistening pitchforks outside the palace gates.
Arjay
Friday, June 13, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A Call to Arms
Who would have ever thought that quiet, mild mannered, Bill Moyers would be the one to toss the torch and ignite a white hot fire under the moribund journalistic world? He didn't, yet, but if you'll just take the next 19 minutes and listen to his speech
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE
to the National Conference for Media Reform I think you'll agree with me that his call to arms to the nation's journalists sounds just a bit like Patrick Henry.
In fact, he stirred this septuagenarian into writing this blog, the first one in a long, long while. It was while listening to what Moyers said that I realized that, given a lifetime as a journalist, if I didn't write something I was a part of the problem we face in this 21st Century.
Moyers gently pointed out that journalists no longer ask the tough questions. They no longer hold the feet of politicians and other government "spokespersons" to the fire; asking follow-up questions, asking for facts not speculation or memorized talking points. And, he lies much of this failing at the feet of a government which has allowed, nay, encouraged, our once free and independent journalistic tradition to become owned and dominated by corporate and conglomerate interests with only one thing in mind -- the bottom line.
Moyers' speech awoke in me something I carried with me as a journalist for every day of my 30 years writing for the public press and that was that I was sitting in that boring meeting or covering that court trial because I represented those thousands of people who couldn't or wouldn't attend in person. And, that I was using my skills to tell them what they needed to know if they/we were to continue to maintain an informed populace. That, by the way, is one of the corner posts upon which our Democracy is founded.
He names big media as being complicit in the Bush Administration's propaganda campaign to seduce America into the Iraq war. Here's the difference: back when journalists had the backing of their employers even a cub reporter wouldn't have hesitated even a microsecond to ask the questions that surely would have revealed that the Emperor had no clothes. That doesn't happen today and, why, you may ask? It's because the employers are now corporations who have many interests, many of them closely bound to government, and everyone knows that to rock the boat leads to not a life jacket, but to a pink slip.
On the one hand I'm glad I no longer work for Reuters or the Tampa Tribune or even the little Pottstown Mercury because I have this inherent dislike of castration. Luckily, I still have the skill to put my thoughts into readable prose and I have this blog and I no longer intend to remain silent.
In some countries you can be put to jail for criticizing the government, even killed. But, hell, I'm 70 years old. Not a whole lot of time left and there's not a whole lot that even a government can do to me that the sometimes dissolute life of a journeyman reporter hasn't.
Keep tuned.
Arjay
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE
to the National Conference for Media Reform I think you'll agree with me that his call to arms to the nation's journalists sounds just a bit like Patrick Henry.
In fact, he stirred this septuagenarian into writing this blog, the first one in a long, long while. It was while listening to what Moyers said that I realized that, given a lifetime as a journalist, if I didn't write something I was a part of the problem we face in this 21st Century.
Moyers gently pointed out that journalists no longer ask the tough questions. They no longer hold the feet of politicians and other government "spokespersons" to the fire; asking follow-up questions, asking for facts not speculation or memorized talking points. And, he lies much of this failing at the feet of a government which has allowed, nay, encouraged, our once free and independent journalistic tradition to become owned and dominated by corporate and conglomerate interests with only one thing in mind -- the bottom line.
Moyers' speech awoke in me something I carried with me as a journalist for every day of my 30 years writing for the public press and that was that I was sitting in that boring meeting or covering that court trial because I represented those thousands of people who couldn't or wouldn't attend in person. And, that I was using my skills to tell them what they needed to know if they/we were to continue to maintain an informed populace. That, by the way, is one of the corner posts upon which our Democracy is founded.
He names big media as being complicit in the Bush Administration's propaganda campaign to seduce America into the Iraq war. Here's the difference: back when journalists had the backing of their employers even a cub reporter wouldn't have hesitated even a microsecond to ask the questions that surely would have revealed that the Emperor had no clothes. That doesn't happen today and, why, you may ask? It's because the employers are now corporations who have many interests, many of them closely bound to government, and everyone knows that to rock the boat leads to not a life jacket, but to a pink slip.
On the one hand I'm glad I no longer work for Reuters or the Tampa Tribune or even the little Pottstown Mercury because I have this inherent dislike of castration. Luckily, I still have the skill to put my thoughts into readable prose and I have this blog and I no longer intend to remain silent.
In some countries you can be put to jail for criticizing the government, even killed. But, hell, I'm 70 years old. Not a whole lot of time left and there's not a whole lot that even a government can do to me that the sometimes dissolute life of a journeyman reporter hasn't.
Keep tuned.
Arjay
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