Podcasting Censored by Government 241
PodCoward writes "VH is blogging that in Belgium a former talk-show host and now member of parliament for the biggest political party, Jurgen Verstrepen, received a fine of 12,500 Euro because he hadn't asked permission for his podcast." From the article: "The decision is apparently politically inspired and motivated by content, although formal reasons like non-compliance with Flanders' media regulation have been put forward in the motivation of the decision to fine. The issue has raised some serious concerns about free speech on the Internet in Flanders, about the definition of 'broadcasting,' and about territoriality."
European internet control needed? (Score:2, Insightful)
The same kind of BS will happen here in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Have opinions on candidates? Have a blog? Comment on blogs? Hit tipjars? Too vocal and influential?
Look forward to visits from the FEC.
Money is speech, speech is money. Talk too much and you'll be over the limit for campaign contributions.
Thank the honorable senators McCain and Feingold.
Re:European internet control needed? (Score:1, Insightful)
So here's a question for you: why does government need to be involved with the internet at all, beyond enforcing the core of natural law (no force, no fraud) which it supposedly already does?
Re:I'm sure glad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell 2600 magazine about how much more "free" it is over here. [wired.com]
Different ideas of Freedome (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have ever heard Roosevelt's speech on the four freedoms can see just how hard it is.
The four freedoms are
Freedom of speech.
Freedom of worship.
Freedom from fear.
And Freedom from want.
How can you have freedom of speech and freedom from fear? Belgian is trying to give it's population freedom from fear be limiting racist speech. It is a trade off. It is really up to the people of Belgian to decide if that is a trade off they want. The US believes in a different set of trade offs. I tend to feel those are the correct trade offs for the US. Belgian is a democratic country and can and should work out what it thinks is best for it's population. Hopefully this is being debated in Belgian.
Re:Different ideas of Freedome (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all. Freedom from fear can ONLY come from inside yourself.
Re:How Funny! (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it. If Watergate happened today, it would rate an outraged blog entry or two on DailyKos, and be spun into evanescent gossamer by Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. I doubt that the Committee to Re-Elect the President would even have to book an appearance for its representative on Hannity. The whole thing would blow over just that quickly, lost in the popular anomie that is "outrage fatigue."
So no, at least at the present time, the powers that be in the US have seen no need to enforce excessive regulation of free speech, except in a few cases where the religious freaks have to be appeased. Attempts like the CDA and COPA have been desultory efforts at best compared to what we've seen in Europe and Australia. I don't think this'll change anytime soon... they (correctly) see no downside in letting the bloggers stew in their own juices.
Anonymously said (Score:3, Insightful)
Now look what hate has done to Europe in the 1930ies and look what it does to the world now. Freedom of Speech? The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. How much freedom is there in a lie, or in half the truth?
How much freedom is there in hate?
Re:Doesn't appear to be because it's a podcast (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd prefer that my enemies make themselves known, rather than hide in the shadows. And it is sickening and somewhat frightening that a government would encourage the latter.
Re:The same kind of BS will happen here in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
Money is speech, speech is money.
"What are you cuffing me for, officer??? What do you mean I can't offer to slip you twenty bucks for forgetting what your radar gun said! I was exercising my right to free speech!"
Bribes, no matter what you call them, are not "speech". Speech is speech. If I choose to make a posting on my own blog, or here on Slashdot, or (fill in the blank), of course that should be my right, political or not-and it is. No one's stopping me, and no one's stopping you either.
If I'm wrong, when was your last visit from the FEC? You apparently are inclined toward political speech.
The big difference is whether you are unofficially exercising your right as a citizen to speak in support of or against a political candidate of your choice, or whether you are officially giving money to or speaking at the request of that candidate.
It's legal for me to speak any opinion I have (or to present facts-only thing you can't do is present something as fact that's provably untrue) about a police officer, judge, jury member, city department head, or any other public official. It should always be legal to the same for elected officials.
On the other hand, it is patently ILLEGAL for me to slip a bribe to any of those officials I just mentioned. And once again, it should be illegal for elected officials, as well. I would never be in favor of anything that abrogates the "one person, one vote" system-and our current system of "one dollar, one vote" is a grave threat to that indeed.
Re:Doesn't appear to be because it's a podcast (Score:1, Insightful)
Which explains race riots in France how?
Re:Anonymously said (Score:2, Insightful)
Who decides what is or is not a lie?
Who decides what is or is not hatred?
If your answer is anything other than "me", you are a hateful liar. This is why freedom of speech must include those things which an individual might consider hateful or a lie. Otherwise freedom of speech is nothing but a hateful slogan chanted by liars.
Re:European internet control needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, a guess. Belgian gov't != EU perhaps...?
This is exactly the sort of value system that the Eurocrats
Eurocrats? Say after me -- b-e-l-g-i-a-n-s.
There have been no signs of this, rather to the contrary, in the country of "Eurocrats" I live in,
Rebut it, or work to change it. Calling it "trolling" isn't going to help anyone.
But generalizing governments to cover international organizations do?
Re:Doesn't appear to be because it's a podcast (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, at least in Europe, we have the guts to say, "this may be democracy, but you have no right to speak".
Re:I'm sure glad... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems that when the US censors free speech, it's never the government's fault. It's the individual voter's fault for letting the government get away with it. But when the same thing happens in Europe, it's "evil socialist governments" who are at fault, not the individual voters.
Nevermind the complexities of the electoral systems and how much one's vote can actually change entrenched systems. Europe bad! America good!
Re:Typical Americano-Centric post (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Typical Americano-Centric post (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, youth.
The reason those of us who have been educated with a sense of history is that the Europeans claim to believe in free speech, but they don't. You see, free speech means "Freedom to offend people". We broke away from England because of that principle, and we fought two great wars on the continent to defend those principals (against Nazis!). To see the Belgians, French, and Germans disregard the millions of deaths over the past 10 years defending those freedom strikes those of us who had fathers die in those wars as really really bad.
"And what's worse is that people think that free speech in America means being able to say racist and ethnic slurs"
Free speech means just that. It means the freedom to offend. It means the right to say stuff that you will find utterly offense. It means speech that will hurt you to your core. That's free speech. It's an important right, because it gives you the freedom to say things against conventional beliefs that people will find offensive.
"We agree Hitler was a bad guy, but we preserve our right to free speech because we should be able to say absolutely anything we want at all times. However, maybe if we stopped allowing whites to publically slur other races sooner, we could have ended segregation sooner, prevented Japanese Americans from being sent to internment camps, and prevented our own ethnic crimes from being committed in Tuskeegee."
First, America sent its sons and fathers to die to defeat Hitler; we changed our whole way of life to defeat him, so please stop with the revisionist history. Segregation didn't occur because people were allowed to talk about it, Japanese weren't sent to internment camps because we were allowed to talk about it, and the experiments you speak were not the result of free speech, they were the result of secrecy and an unwillingness to challenge coventional wisdom.
Do you think it was popular in 1940 to say FDR was doing a bad job by putting Americans from Japan in internment camps? Dude, Americans thought it was a *GREAT* idea.
Free speech is the most crucial freedom we have and its worth fighting and dieing for, even if it offends you. I don't get how you don't even understand history here! It scares me a great deal!
Do you think if we stopped talking about racism it would disappear? Seriously?
Re:Typical Americano-Centric post (Score:1, Insightful)
However, maybe if we stopped allowing whites to publically slur other races sooner, we could have ended segregation sooner,
to:
However, maybe if we stopped allowing anyone to publically slur races not of themselves sooner, we could have ended segregation sooner,
Because preventing white people from cussing out "niggers" will only lead to the inverse. If you're going to cut people's rights (in order to prevent them infringing others rights), do it fairly, en-masse.
Re:welcome to kneejerk central!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:European internet control needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the key is not power but accountability. All governments have a heck of a lot of power by default. The trick is to make the people in power answer in some fashion; regularly scheduled elections with unoppressed opposition parties is one of the best methods. In the case at hand, a member of the opposition party is being sensored apparently for political reasons. VERY bad sign.
Re:Typical Americano-Centric post (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually that's one of the benefits of these laws from the perspective of someone who doesn't have to live under them. They provide a nice counter-example to prove that criminalizing an unpopular opinion does not make that opinion vanish.
Re:Different ideas of Freedome (Score:2, Insightful)
Although I do not really agree with the way that our government deals with this racist party in general, we have to keep in mind that racism is still a big social problem. The riots in France have shown us that in a painful way.
So, freedom of speech? Hell yes, but not at any cost.
Re:Doesn't appear to be because it's a podcast (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Howard Stern (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Typical Americano-Centric post (Score:2, Insightful)
As another poster already pointed out, that's utter bunk.
"preface: I am an american myself."
Well that explains it; but you forgot the "self-loathing" part. You seem to think that racism and other forms of bigotry and oppression are unique to America, and that Americans are the cause of said evils.
Get a clue. Oppression existed long before America was founded, and it wasn't caused by people talking about it.
Did you ever consider that perhaps our enduring racial tensions are perpetuated by our inability to openly confront and discuss the issues?
Re:Do you ever wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it somewhat illogical to first suggest that no one reads blogs, and then in the very next sentence say that you do, apparently in such amounts that you can recognize stuff that was copied from another blog ?