John McCain Introduces Terrible Bill

I used to like John McCain. But he's really lost me lately. And now this... he's introduced a bill that will penalize community-based websites for the actions of their users, i.e., not only demanding the impossible, but writing it into law. This bill--if passed--could have a debilitating effect on one of the better things the country's got going for it right now: interactive Internet culture.

Some choice excerpts:

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

snip

According to the proposed legislation, these types of individuals or businesses would be required to file reports: any Web site with a message board; any chat room; any social-networking site; any e-mail service; any instant-messaging service; any Internet content hosting service; any domain name registration service; any Internet search service; any electronic communication service; and any image or video-sharing service.

And so on. Part of the bill is apparently aimed at sex offenders (yeah, that's right, Senators hiding behind the tired old "OH, BUT WE'RE TRYING TO PROTECT THE CHILLLLLLDREN!!!" line... no surprise there) but the fact is that blogs and social networking sites are going to be caught up in the dragnet as well. This is simply a bad bill that will penalize community-based websites for being community-based. From Daily Kos blogger DDay:

Regarding photos and videos, I'm assuming this is why photo storage sites are limited to a select [f]ew. Still, that's no safeguard against ripping something off the Web and uploading it to Flickr, for example. The idea that blog owners would be personally responsible for that action, at a cost of $300,000, is far more punitive that what would seem a logical standard.

Uhhhhhh.... not good. So how does this affect social networking sites and the blogosphere?

We've already seen, with soon-to-be former Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick's legislation, how dangerous it is to give the federal government sway over "social networking sites," especially when they set the definition of what they are. Anything with a comment, and certainly anything with a profile, can be seen as a networking site. It appears that the burden would be on the site owner to provide criminal background checks on all of its users, many of whom are anonymous for very specific reasons.

This is an absolute intrusion into the blogosphere and makes a mockery of freedom of speech. I don't expect that such an awful measure would pass a Democratic Congress. However, once you start putting things in terms of "protecting children," anything can happen. And if this passes, I don't know how you could have anything but a top-down blog without comments. Otherwise the mass of writing on the site that is not user-generated could never be vetted.

Obviously it's impossible to keep track of all the content on user-generated sites---you know, like Lose the Label---unless the content is removed... at the expense of destroying communities.

All so a Senator and president-wannabe can make a damn headline?

No. No. No. No. NO.

Please email your Senator telling them to vote no on S. 4089, the McCain anti-blog, anti-Facebook, anti-youth, anti-freedom of speech bill.