Assault On Free Speech

Free speech…it is one of the hallmarks of the American way of life. The ability to freely express oneself without fear of government reprisal is so fundamental that it is enshrined in the first amendment to our national Constitution. Yet despite this protection, there have always been restrictions on how free our speech really is, and in some cases, this is how it should be. We are not free to speak falsehoods that cause harm to others. Libel and slander laws address that issue. We are not free to speak in ways that incite fear or riots without cause. The oft used “yelling fire in a crowded movie house” illustrates that point quite well and we have laws against that too. Like any freedom, the freedom to speak requires a sense of responsibility by the speaker.

The issue of free speech has been all over the media in recent weeks, arising from the outrage of the Muslim world in protest to some caricatures of their religious prophet. It has also been talked about in the wake of the NSA wiretapping scandals and the possible effects that those actions may have on the U.S. government’s critics to express their views free of government eavesdropping and without fear of possible sanctions against them. In both of these cases, the ability to exercise the freedom of speech has been called into question, but in different ways. In one case, the ability to exercise free speech is being questioned by religious fundamentalists who don't offer such freedoms to their own people. In the other, the use of free speech is being chilled by abusive governmental policies that increasingly seem to be targeted at political opponents. However, despite the serious implications of both of these matters, the topic of this essay is not to address those matters. Instead, I would like to discuss the efforts of American corporations to abridge the newest form of free speech in the world…namely, the use of the internet to get and share information and opinions in a way never before possible.

The internet has historically been an open medium, allowing innovation to improve the availability of information and the communication of people everywhere. This factor has led to the rise of many new businesses, including online shopping, online advertising, and of course, the sharing of news, information, and opinion. The internet has created a huge financial opportunity for businesses and individuals alike, but now it seems that some of the biggest providers of internet access want to change the rules and corner all those profits for themselves. The effects of this effort will not only consolidate the money making possibilities of the internet into the hands of a few giant and wealthy corporations, it will also have a chilling effect on the newest form of free speech, blogging.

With the internet today, all someone has to do is open an online account with a service provider and the entire world wide web is available with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks. You simply pay your $10 or $20 or $40 each month, depending on the speed of your service, and you can get literally all the information on any subject that you want. The explosive growth of the new electronic medium has enabled people to find out the time of the latest movie, download coupons, pay their bills, file their taxes, and organize political positions, to name just a few. You pay your provider fee and the content is free. And it has worked wonderfully. The biggest service providers get a lot of money in monthly user fees. The biggest content providers get a lot of money from online advertisers. And all the users get whatever it is they need or want from the experience. But what has been great for consumers, writers, and the curious citizen hasn’t been great enough for the biggest service providers in the game. Now they want you to pay not just for the ability to access the net, but also for the content you receive.

In recent statements to both the press and the U.S. Congress, the biggest telecom companies in the country think they deserve even more money, and they are actively seeking to restrict internet usage by trying to impose usage fees to content providers for using the infrastructure of the internet to disseminate information. By arguing that they own the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the network, they say that they should be able charge anyone who uses the network a user fee.

Bellsouth's William L. Smith told reporters that he would like the Internet to be turned into a "pay-for-performance marketplace" where his company would be allowed, for example, to charge Yahoo for the right to have its site load faster than Google. (Washington Post, December 1, 2005)

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg says that web applications (like search engines, online video, VoIP telephone) need to "share the cost" of broadband - broadband that's already been paid for by the consumer. "We have to make sure that they [application providers] don't sit on our network and chew up bandwidth. We need to pay for the pipe." (TechWeb News, January 5, 2006)

AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre said: "What they [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that….Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?" (Business Week, November 7, 2005)

and

"I think the content providers should be paying for the use of the network.... Now they might pass it on to their customers who are looking at a movie, for example. But that ought to be a cost of doing business for them. They shouldn't get on [the network] and expect a free ride." (Financial Times, January 30, 2006)

What these men are really saying is that the more money you have to give to them and their companies, the more your right will remain to use and access the internet as you do today. Want to access 100 hundred sites a day with a high-speed connection? No problem, so long as you have the cash to pay for each site you visit, each page you view, and the faster you want to look the more expensive it will be. Effectively, they are trying to shut the door on the average person to utilize the great tool of information and commerce that is the internet. And for those who are willing to shell out a few more bucks, they are even trying to kick your personal websites into the slow lane by restricting high-speed infrastructure to their own content companies or affiliates.

But it’s not just the service providers that are trying to change the way we use the net.

America Online and Yahoo, two of the nations largest e-mail providers are taking a shot at getting an “e-mail tax” enacted in an effort to squeeze more money out of people who seek to communicate and share information via e-mail.

From the New York Times:

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely. The Internet companies say that this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services. They also stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.

One wonders how soon it will be before they start demanding non-commercial e-mails be charged fees as well.

The successful effects of these efforts will ultimately spell the end of internet usage as we know it, and will shut the door on the freedom of speech that an affordable, open, and largely free internet offers us all today. These are issues that don’t just affect political bloggers either, though those of us who fall into that category will probably be the first to feel the loss. Ultimately, everyone who uses the internet for anything will feel the squeeze from these greedy, and already incredibly wealthy corporations. And while they don’t yet realize it, these measures will also kill off the revenue streams that these businesses already enjoy. When average citizens can’t afford both access and content fees, they will use the internet less and less. Advertisers will move away because their audience will have dried up. When the advertisers go, so too do all the profits. In what is often the case with unbridled greed, these guys are loading the gun they will be shooting their foot with.

Fortunately, it hasn’t happened yet. And it is possible for you to make it known that you want this nonsense to end. This is not a partisan or political problem. It will affect everyone of us who uses the internet.

To let the Telecom service providers know how much you oppose their actions, sign this petition.

To tell AOL that they need to keep their sticky fingers off of our e-mail, sign this one.

Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That….

(Some readers may remember this essay from it's original posting on February 17, 2005. I apologize for the repeat, but this topic is one that doesn't seem to go away and needs to be addressed with some regularity. The plight of homosexuals in this and other countries is one of the last great battles for true equality among people and is one that is consistently brought up by religious pundits as a smokescreen to deflect attention from more pressing issues in the world today. Homosexuality is not an agenda being pushed upon heterosexuals, it is a way of life for millions of people who only want the be treated as human beings. I hope you will find some words of wisdom here. I will return with a new essay in my next post.)


If you ever watched Seinfeld, the title of this essay will immediately reveal the nature of the topic. For those of you who haven’t, this essay is about homosexuality and its quest for equal recognition under the law. As previously inferred in the essay Sex, Morality, and the Law, the practice of homosexuality in and of itself should not be, and is not, of any legal importance to the well being of society and as such, has no business being legislated. Homosexuals are no different from anyone else, except for their sexual preferences. They eat, breathe, work, sleep, think, feel, and love just as any other human being does. They look just like other people. They sound like other people. They are our friends and neighbors and family members. Yet for some reason, they are set apart from the heterosexual majority, as if they deserve less from this country and less from our laws.

What arguments exist that makes this segregation seem reasonable? Those who condemn the gay lifestyle typically use one of several justifications for discriminating against homosexuals: religion, nature, or family values. One of the oldest, yet still quite popular, justifications used is that of religion. Early religious doctrines outlawed homosexual behavior as abominations in the eyes of god, a concept based in part on the assertions that sex is bad, and though sex is bad, it’s okay if it makes more babies who will grow up and worship god. The corollary being that god only allows sex to make babies, and since homosexual activity will never result in offspring it is wrong. But more than just wrong, it is an affront to god to abuse his method for perpetual glorification by using the gift of life for mere pleasure. From this logic comes the dictum that homosexual behavior is a sin and should be outlawed.

The obvious flaw with this argument lays not so much in the description of how babies are made, but the idea that sex equals babies is universally held and therefore deserves legal status. But this is often the mistake with arguments based solely on theological reasoning, because the nature of our religious institutions prevent them from admitting any fault with their religious doctrine, keeping them from recognizing the contradictions within their own holy texts regarding the treatment of people as free individuals while insisting that their actions are free only if god doesn’t object, which he pretty much always does. Since the religious argument’s only justification is to please god, which is highly subjective, this argument is not sufficient for denying legal status and must be dismissed.

In a similar vein, those who would argue that homosexuality “just isn’t natural” have a hard time making that claim stick. Their main premise is identical to the religious premise, only without the god part. Basically, the argument relies on the notion that sex is basically a procreative behavior, and that sexual encounters that can’t possibly produce offspring are therefore against the natural design that clearly gave male/female opposites the complimentary parts for achieving this end. Though less judgmental regarding the pleasurable effects of sex, this only applies to heterosexual behavior, being fringe benefits for helping nature run her course.

The problem with this argument is that when it is examined further along the lines of “natural design,” it could be argued that homosexuality in itself is of natural design too. After all, if humans are creatures of nature, then our variations are natural as well. If among these variations one results in homosexual behavior, then isn’t that by natural design also? As it must be so, then homosexuality is just as natural as heterosexuality or bisexuality or even asexuality. The mere fact that homosexuality constitutes a minority of the population is irrelevant in this context, since the percentages are also set by natural design. If we know anything about the natural world, it is that in all species, variation abounds. This argument actually proves itself wrong when allowed to run a logical course, so it is not sufficient for denying legal status and must be dismissed.

That leaves us with the last ditch effort to find a reason for justifying the segregation of homosexuals and equal recognition under the law. The “family values” argument. This argument begins with the premise that for children to be raised to become productive citizens, the family unit should contain a man and a woman. This is the most important facet of the family values argument. As long as there is a man and a woman together as parents, the family values requirement has been satisfied. Since homosexual couples can’t meet this requirement, the can’t become a “real family.” Since a “real family” is the only way to properly raise children, for the good of society, all legally recognized families must be of this basic design.

The family values argument pretends to preserve the family unit, but makes no other real efforts towards solving the actual problems in today’s families. What is more harmful to the cohesion of family units: divorce or two parents who love each other and want to stay together, but happen to be the same sex? Which is more damaging: the lack of parental participation or having two moms’ at the mother/daughter tea? Which is more debilitating for a child: an abusive natural parent or seeing his two dads’s kissing? The family values argument makes no real effort to encourage heterosexual families to create and maintain secure, stable, emotionally supportive families for children, which would better reflect the concept of valuing the family. Instead, they only seek to prevent homosexuals from participating in one of life’s great joys and endeavors, the task of parenthood. Because the real truth about the family values argument, the dirty little secret, is that this argument is based on plain old bigotry, dressed up in its finest clothes. It’s discrimination in its purest form and when it’s hypocrisy is revealed, it proves to be the least sufficient for denying legal status and must be dismissed.

As this leaves us with no other arguments that can justify the unequal legal status homosexuals currently endure, it is the duty of this government to remove any barriers that prevent homosexual couples from enjoying the same legal status heterosexuals have with regards to marriage, adoption, taxes, work benefits, and on and on. Science seems to support the assertion that homosexuality is a natural occurrence, something hardwired into a person’ genetic code. Religion and bigotry (not always the same, mind you) insist that it is simply a behavioral issue that can easily be repressed or reformed or outlawed into extinction. The scientific view has more going for it, in terms of common sense, and it has the added benefit of not legislating religious morality by proxy.

Removing the barriers for homosexual couples has no effect on individual couples’ relationships. How many people do you know that would throw away their hetero relationships the minute gays could get married because now their own marriage was worthless? Allowing gay people the chance to share their life with someone they love does not weaken the bonds of monogamy and child rearing. It only adds to the number of people finding individual happiness together and passing that happiness to future generations. And it strengthens the bonds of society through the continued affirmation in the belief for freedom and equality for all citizens.