This Is Something Important To Think About

And my initial reaction is that this is an extremely ill-conceived notion.

What is this of which I speak? It is a bill which was introduced recently and called "Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act of 2006".

So am I for the exploitation of children? Of course not. What I am against is are some of the provisions of the proposed bill. As Think Progress noted, the bill would do some of the following:

– Commercial websites and personal blogs “would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000.”
– Internet service providers (ISPs) are already required to issue such reports, but under McCain’s legislation, bloggers with comment sections may face “even stiffer penalties” than ISPs.
— Social networking sites will be forced to take “effective measures” — such as deleting user profiles — to remove any website that is “associated” with a sex offender. Sites may include not only Facebook and MySpace, but also Amazon.com, which permits author profiles and personal lists, and blogs like DailyKos, which allows users to sign up for personal diaries.

A bill like this would certainly abridge First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and turn hosting sites and ISPs into monitors of what is and is not legal. And we all know how much corporations like to err on the side of protecting themselves.

Now, I know that its very rare that I get comments here, but think about other sites where you do leave comments and what that does add to the discussion of... anything.

If you would like to speak out on this to McCain directly, you can do so here. If there is some other way to protest this bill that someone else is aware of, please let me know.