I should write about shark attacks (why do sharks attack? because they are poor on defense) or about various white people disappearing, it seems, from a cursory reading of the topics of the day in the mainstream media. I'm not a journalist, obviously. But if I write this blog as a private goddess I might be in trouble, too:
Some bloggers who built their Internet followings with antiestablishment prose are lobbying the establishment to protect their livelihoods from federal regulations, working with a political action committee, lawyers and public-relations consultants.
"There's a certain responsibility I have to help protect the medium. I have the platform, the voice to be able to do so," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of www.DailyKos.com.
He testified Tuesday at a hearing on a Federal Election Commission proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Internet. He urged the FEC to take a hands-off approach.
At issue here is whether us bloggers should be exempt from campaign financing regulations in the manner of proper journalists, so I'm not personally threatened by the proposal. All I ever do is badmouth people. But this might also be the dipping-of-the-toes-in-water proposal, to see how far the Americans are willing to see their cyberspace regulated, and that does make me worried. Any future regulation would surely hit a pagan goddess hard. So I'm opposed to this regulation, too.
I also agree (!; maybe Hell has frozen over?) with the founder of RedState.org, a wingnut blog, who said:
"What goal would be served by protecting Rush Limbaugh's multimillion-dollar talk radio program, but not a self-published blogger with a fraction of the audience?" Krempasky asked the commission.
The cynical part in me knows that regulation of the internet is just a question of time. What is happening is far too democratic to please any authoritarian government.