Not sure why I'm surprised anymore...

Easing my way back into politics tonight, with two stories I found shocking, and I'm starting to question why I'm shocked by anything these days. First up,

Obama shuts down 73,000 blogs.
I was unaware of this, but last month, the white house attacked several file sharing websites and seized their domain names. Websites like The Pirate Bay(Endorsed with the Zack Mayo Stamp of Approval) and MegaUpload apparently narrowly escaped the wrath of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Agency, which might just be my new least favorite government enforcement agency(Sorry ATF, you'll have to go kill a few more innocent people). Now, the blog website Blogetery was just recently shutdown by the federal government. The owner of the server was strong armed into terminating service for the 73,000. The feds have kept a tight lid on the situation and no one can say why they were terminated beyond that it showed a "history of abuse" taking place on the server(Guilty until proven innocent, I suppose). I would guess that would mean file sharing and infringement of Intellectual Property(IP).

This bothers me for two reasons.
1) The government having the ability to shut down a private freehosting website does not bode well with me. It's very Stalinistic. It reminds me of the tactics of the Iranian government in the recent attempted green revolution(or whatever those crazy Iranians wanted to do). They'd take videos of the beatings and the shootings and post them on youtube and twitter. Soon the Iranian government started shutting down internet access throughout the country. Honestly, before Obama got elected, if you showed me this title "73,000 Blogs Shut Down by Government" I would have sworn it was a story about China. Is this another power we're going to let the executive branch have? Control of the flow of information over the internet. We gave them TV decades ago, mail and telecoms via the Patriot Act, and now the internet? If this doesn't bother you immediately, ask yourself, what's next? Seriously, this sets a HUGE precedent. I don't mean to sound like a stupid right winger conspiracy nut here, but who's to say the Obama can't make a call and have the servers for FOX's websites crash a week before elections in November. Whose to say my account on this website won't be terminated because I've spoken out against my government. "That's impossible." "That'll never happen, it will never come to that." Oh yeah? I think we took the first step today. They didn't shut down the blogs of those people, they silenced them.

2) "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech"
IP is a very, very tricky issue. Sure I want the artists to be able to make a living. But at the same time, all my music may or may not be downloaded from file sharing websites and I simply buy the albums of artists I hold dear to my heart like Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. If I were a representative in our democracy, I would not make policy based off this, but I believe that file sharing is a freedom, a form of speech, and that it is protected by the 1st amendment. I don't receive campaign donations, so it's easy for me to say that.

Side Note: I spoke to an IP lawyer when I was in London. He was a bright guy and he told me he paid for all of his music. He told me a story about a case where a single mother downloaded a few kids movies to show her children on a car ride. She was caught and prosecuted. Found guilty and fined $250,000. The mother's yearly salary was below the poverty level. She'd have to work years just to pay the fine, not to mention raise her kids and feed them and herself. It just makes me wonder, the crime for stealing those movies from a store would probably be a slap on the wrist. Worst comes to worst, a small fine, maybe a few courses to go through. Why is the punishment for file sharing exponentially larger than the punishment for stealing a hard copy of the file?



Second Story,
Journolist: Liberal Journalists conspire to defend Obama and smear dissenters.

I'll give you the link here http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/20/documents-show-media-plotting-to-kill-stories-about-rev-jeremiah-wright/ and if you're too lazy, the title will suffice.

Yes, a group of like minded liberal journalists(from Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic to name a few) proposed plans to smear critics of Obama, going so far as to use allegations of racism to discredit them.

Now, let's pause for a moment. I was on my high school newspaper, I've studied the subject, I appreciate what journalism does for a democracy, and I am generally knowledgeable on the topic. I am not one who subscribes to the notion of there being a radical mainstream media controlled by liberals that's out to get us all. I hate when people on the right say that because I think that even if they have a valid point, it discredits them immediately to anyone on the left listening. After years of watching various networks(mostly CNN) and thinking for myself, I have gone back to watching FOX news. People seem to forget that MSNBC is at least as far to the left as FOX is to the right. CNN used to be in the center/left but now it's simply irrelevant(I miss you Lou Dobbs). I don't do this because "those guys in the mainstream media are lying" or "the libs control all the other news channels." I do it because FOX makes me aware of stories I want to be aware of (Like Obama shutting down blogs) and because my blood pressure cannot handle the continuous stream of yelling caused by the nonsense spewed to me on other news networks, while I only yell at FOX very often.

LONG STORY SHORT, I'm a little disappointed to find that these journalists were doing that(or to even know of it and not raise a flag at the matter). They take an oath to be fair, to be open, to promote truth and to do lots of other ideal things like that, and these journalists did not do that. My subscription to TIME was ended recently and now I'm glad of it. I could hardly stand the prattle of it's columnists any longer(the photojournalism is worth the subscription alone though). I know there are slants out there, I've always thought they weren't a big deal and chosen to accept them as a fact of life and ignore them. To see in cold hard print that these journalists literally conspired to smear critics of Obama softens me up to the notion that "the mainstream media is controlled by liberals," and I thought I'd never come to that state of mind.