Bloggers must be licensed | Blogs about Broadband, Technology, Telecoms and the Internet.
The wheels of beaurocracy slowly turn, attemting to moderate our thoughts and actions. Free thinking is the price they toll for the illusion of instututionalised fantasies of safety:
The US Government is tightening the noose around the necks of bloggers stating that they will now have to receive a license to operate.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) argues that they need to have a hand in this industry to ensure that the public is protected from unscrupulous bloggers who for example may take freebies in exchange for reviews thereby providing tainted information.
Certain media circles are arguing that this is a mechanism for the US Government to control what has previously been an unregulated industry.
Paul Joseph Watson from PrisonPlanet.com is one such critic, he says, “in reality this has little to do with the FTC’s concern for fair business practices and everything to do with the government getting a foot in the door for their overarching agenda to regulate and control blogs and free speech on the Internet.”
What is surprising is that independent news reporting and daily blogs from Joe Public has grown to such an extent that the US Government feel they need to step in and ‘lend a helping hand’.
South Africa is still a far way off from this and freedom of speech is a well enshrined right in our constitution but the SA government did attempt to regulate the mainstream media a while back. An attempt was made to force the media to receive approval from a ‘censoring’ body before going live with the information.
This change to our laws was thankfully halted but it highlights the problems governments face: they don’t like to hear bad things about their policies and actions yet they are often powerless to prevent the criticism leveled at them.
