The Fairness Doctrine: Internet Censorship Coming Soon to a Web Page Near You

In past conversations with colleagues and friends, I have often commented that some day soon the internet our generation has come to know, the wealth of information available via the click of a mouse, will cease to exist. That in the place of this unfiltered and uncensored access to information, will come a government controlled, censored version of the world wide web under the auspices of the FCC or some other bloated failure of a bureaucracy.

Many have replied to me stating that this was “Henny Penny” or “Chicken Little”, that this simply could not happen here in the land of the free. My counter has been and remains that this will come wrapped in the veil of “protecting the children” or “net neutrality”. We have already seen internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T implement “bandwidth filtering” and “I.P Blocking” as a means to restrict access or to make viewing videos difficult or next to impossible.¹

The technology to accomplish complete filtering already exists and is being used in China with the help of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco. These American companies are co-conspirators with the Chinese government in constructing what is now known as “The Great Firewall of China”. This censorship completely removes hyperlinks from search engine queries/blog posts and includes any and all websites the Chinese government deems “inappropriate”. Websites such as Falun Gong, the Tibetan government-in-exile, and critics of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, just to name a few.²

Further, just this past summer during the Beijing Olympics, athletes staying in the Olympic Village found their own internet access censored, uncensored, then censored again from going to websites like Amnesty International, Wikipedia and the BBC.²

Additionally, for those readers who think its just the Chinese government, think again. Australia is joining in mandatory internet filtering for all of its citizens after first suggesting that the censorship would be optional. The impetus behind this fascist move? You guessed it, the scare tactics of Child pornography and child predators.³ Nevermind, that perhaps parents should consider monitoring their own child’s activities online. Hell, why bother when you can just have the government do the parenting for you? - ah the nanny state.

In fact, Human Rights Watch states:

“…there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it”

With the coronation of President Obama just around the corner and the likely enlarged Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, we are already beginning to hear calls for a reimplementation of “The Fairness Doctrine” echoing the halls of Congress. The “Fairness Doctrine” implemented in 1949 mandated holders of FCC “Broadcast Licenses” covering political or controversial topics to supply “equal time” to the other side of the issue.⁴ Finally, In 1987, during the Presidency of Ronald Regan (R-CA), “The Fairness Doctrine” was finally abolished⁵

Some statists would love to see government mandate what and how we hear specific issues. However the funny thing is,”The Fairness Doctrine” only applied to radio and television broadcast which contained an opinion, it did not cover newspapers. It is my opinion that if the newspapers were not specifically mentioned via the 1st Amendment, they too would have fallen under the iron fist of “The Fairness Doctrine”.

The pull-peddling bureaucrats gained control over radio and television by vomiting up the socialist epoch that “the airwaves are collectively owned by the public and thus under government domain.” Well fellow readers I say bullsh!t, the airwaves are no more public than a newspaper company’s printing presses are public or that somehow Smargus.com is owned by the public.

Do we think for a moment that had radio, television, or the internet been realized at the time of the Bill of Rights that the founders would have limited the inherent right to free speech and opinion to newspapers? It is my opinion that the Founders would have not truncated our inherent right to free speech solely to the printed word. The underlying principle of the 1st Amendment is that we are born with the gift of communicating our opinions to anyone willing to listen, my right to share how I feel on a topic is not mine by government license, it is mine and yours simply by our breaths.

Do we think this very simple principle will halt the control freaks in Washington from reinstating “The Fairness Doctrine”? In my opinion, no. Only this time as the economy begins to collapse further and that “international crisis”⁶ that Senator Biden carelessly quipped forces President Obama to make those “unpopular decisions”⁷ we will see a new more vigorous “Fairness Doctrine” implemented by the plutocratic scoundrels in Washington. It is also my opinion that this “Fairness Doctrine” will seek to implement “internet filters” vis a vis China and Australia, and perhaps some sort of “Internet Domain Licensing” as they have as well.⁸

Source(s): ¹Converge Network Digest • ² The London TeleGraph, Online •³The Herald Sun• ⁴Donald P. Mullally, “The Fairness Doctrine: Benefits and Costs”, The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 1969-1970), p. 577 • ⁵United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Syracuse Peace Council v.FCC • ⁶The Washington Post • ⁷ABC News Blog ⁸Administration of China Internet Domain Names Procedures