The Kochs, their voices crying in the wilderness

You have to feel sorry for the poor old Koch brothers. Multi-billionaires who repeatedly attempt to buy elections with literally hundreds of millions of dollars in ad spend and more direct methods, and yet they get no respect.

Sad Charles Koch was so upset at his lack of a public voice he had to write an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about how pathetic it was that nobody loved him.


(Screenshot from WSJ, via Daily Kos)

The poor dear. He only has billions to buy time and space in the media AND have the WSJ provide him with a giant megaphone. No wonder no one can hear him.

Oh, and he has a Senator who will read his Op Ed out loud on the Senate floor so it can be entered into the official record.

In Sen. Moran's apparent view, poor Mr. Koch—the petrochemical billionaire who has pumped hundreds of millions into projects denying climate-change, undermined federal regulations and nudged legislators into passing a plethora of laws helpful to the corporatist agenda in dozens of states—doesn't have a big enough forum to present his views.
So, the senator, whose top campaign contributor just happens to be Koch Industries, decided to give Charlie a boost by reading aloud the man's Wednesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. If only constituents could get as fast of action on fixing their potholes.

(From Daily Kos)

But apart from the billions, the Wall Street Journal at his beck and call and the Senators who do his bidding, how will the poor man get his word out to the avid masses? So sad.

SOPA and PIPA

In a couple of hours, several major websites will be going dark to support action against two "anti-piracy" bills which, if passed, would severely weaken the internet.

I like the internet. I'm sort of against piracy, but I certainly don't have any reason at all to believe that a person copping a free track or free movie off the internet would, if prevented from doing so, begin to pay money for them. And I'm certainly not convinced that the best way to stop them downloading something is to pass legislation that would make it impossible for Google, Reddit, boing boing, YouTube, all your favorite blogs including this one - and thousands of others, to function.

There's a nice flowchart about SOPA and PIPA here. Or you can check Wikipedia. For the next few hours, it's the only thing you can look up on Wikipedia, so there's plenty of netsurfing downtime you can spend on this project.

Good Day, Sunstein!

President Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, current "Information Czar" and likely nominee for the Supreme Court Cass Sunstein, has just published a paper on conspiracy theories.

It's fascinating stuff. Sunstein believes that the Government Has To Do Something About Them, and his recommendations include infiltrating groups, both online and offline, to dispel their theories. The action the government should take includes "planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing cognitive diversity". (p.15)

In English, this would seem to mean "planting doubts about facts to confuse people".

Wait a minnit! If I'd come out last week and said the government was planning to plant doubts about facts to confuse people, you'd have called me a Conspiracy Theorist!

And apart from planting doubts about facts, Sunstein also discusses imposing a tax on "those who disseminate such theories", hiring "credible private parties to engage in counterspeech" and ultimately, "under imaginable conditions" the "government might ban conspiracy theorizing". (p. 14)

His cited conspiracy theories are a grab bag. He thinks the belief that aliens crash landed at Roswell has caused no harm, "with the exception of bad television shows". Hey, everyone's a critic! You try writing a TV show, Cass! Betcha can't! However, there is apparently a conspiracy theory that exposure to sunlight is good for you, which is "false and dangerous". No it isn't. Many perfectly sane and expert scientists think sunlight is good for you... but then again they are human beings. It's highly likely Cass Sunstein is Undead, which means he would explode if sunlight fell on him. Or he's one of those lizards from Zeta Reticuli - I understand the New World Order is run by them. And the Illuminati.

Regarding the Oklahoma City bombing, he says the "perpetrators shared a complex of conspiratorial beliefs about federal government", and "[m]any who shared their beliefs did not act on them, but a few actors did, with terrifying consequences", and because explosives are cheap and easily delivered, he seems to think that people should not be allowed to have... er...beliefs. This includes of course, the 'many' who are harmless.

I'm not sure what 'beliefs' he's planning to cognitively diversify, but if it's the belief that the government's a tyrant and has to go, then he's up against the fact that America is founded on overthrowing tyrants. That belief is the Origin Myth of the United States. Good luck arresting Thomas Jefferson.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

More here on this conspiracy theory site...oops, have I outed them? Hope not.

I wonder how he thinks the goverment will stop people having 'dangerous' beliefs? Even if they dosed the water supply with a Rationality Drug, rational people disagree, sometimes violently. So, the only way to prevent violence would be to have everyone agreeing on everything. And that would mean banning dissent entirely. Which is what this is all about, of course. 'Cognitive diversity' has no possible positive meaning in the context of the paper.

Edited

Britain's surveillance society

Britain's surveillance society is officially so bad that even Brussels thinks it's illegal.

Fears that Britain was slipping into a surveillance society were heightened yesterday as Brussels initiated legal action after declaring that UK laws guaranteeing data protection were “structurally flawed” and well below the European standard.

The criticism arose after the European Commission investigated the use of “behavioural advertising technology” by British internet service providers, which it found was illegal under European — but not British — law.

“I call on the UK authorities to change their national laws and ensure that national authorities are duly empowered and have proper sanctions at their disposal to enforce EU legislation on the confidentiality of communications,” Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said.

From Timesonline, Britain in the dock over secret tracking of internet accounts Data protection laws 'below European standard'.

*

Freedom of Speech News

Britain, again. Now keeping records of every web page you visit and every email you send. Just in case, you understand. Just in case they need to know.

Full story at The Telegraph.

You're doing it wrong: P2P defense breach claimed

While we're on the subject of censorship and goverment limitations of the web, here's something that's NOT censorship.

Report: Pennsylvania Company Discovers Marine One Security Breach

Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran.

Tiversa CEO Bob Boback said a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file sharing program on one of their systems that contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One and financial information about the cost of the helicopter.

"We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One," Boback said.

"When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive," Boback told WPXI.

Now, any firm that allows its employees to download P2P on to work computers, or allows employees to take sensitive files to their home computers with P2P installed are, frankly, delinquent. I work for a medical company, and there's no way I could get an unauthorized program installed on my work computer. And if I put medical or business information on my home computer, they'd fire my ass inside 30 seconds. Which is exactly how it should be.

How can a defense contractor not know this?


Mind you, this is an interesting sentence from the report:

A Pennsylvania company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Obama's helicopter, Marine One, NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh reported.

Tell me again why this company, Tiversa, monitors P2P networks? Does this mean that when downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing Tiversa to access your hard drive? Why yes, it does!

Guilty, though not charged - internet freedom

New Zealand has a law, due to come into effect yesterday, which says that if you are accused of theft of copyright materials over the internet (like music files), then your internet service provider is obliged by law to cut off your internet access. That is, if you are *accused* (not proven guilty), your service provider (your ISP, your local coffeeshop, your local bookshop, your school and so forth) are required to prevent you from accessing their services.


Not surprisingly this silly law has come under intense fire. Last week, the government backed down a little, saying that the law's backers should explain exactly how this could work. If they don't, within a month, the law will be struck down.

TVNZ says:

After weeks of protest the government has delayed introducing controversial copyright laws. It has told the industry to find a way to make the legislation work or it will be dumped altogether.

The government has announced it is delaying the controversial section 92a that critics say will force internet providers to cut people's connections without proving first they have breached copyright.

The Prime Minister has told the laws backers they have a month to figure out how they will make it work, or it goes.

"Let's see if that code of practice can be achieved. They've been promising it for some time, they say they're close, we're giving them another onth to do that," says John Key.

No need to get smug if you're not in New Zealand - Australia has Clean Feed censorship, in America President Obama (along with failing to end the Iraq war) is appointing RIAA-tainted men to the DOJ, and in the UK, censorship has been around for years and is set to expand.

Governments do not like the internet. They don't know how to make money out of it and they don't want people speaking to each other without their permission. If they get their way, they'll kill it. If you want an internet that is purely for buying taxed goods at big websites, you can have it. If you want it for anything else - start preparing for a battle. We didn't have it 20 years ago and we could well not have it in 20 years' time.

If you want it, here it is, come and get it, but you'd better hurry 'cos it's going fast

ZOMG! Controversy!

Amanda Palmer on 'Oasis':

So:
my label in the UK has been gearing up to promote “oasis” as a radio and video single.a few days before i left for london i got this email from someone at roadrunner:
”Hi Emily/Amanda,Hope you are both well, I just thought I’d let you know that we have been met by fierce opposition on the Oasis track. Which is disheartening, as combined with the video, we all felt it was a great promotional tool and track. All our TV outlets have refused to play the video due to it “making light of rape, religion and abortion”. This is the audio as well as visual. Many of the stations like the track, and even the video but are bound by strict broadcasting rules. I personally find this quite ridiculous.”
dude.wasn’t this the UK, land of black humor blacker than blackest black itself?i emailed back and asked which outlets. the reply:
”NME tv, Scuzz, kerrang, MTV, Q, the box … to name a few. There is only a few networks: bauer, chartshow and MTV. They control all stations and they all had the same issue….”
and i sat there thinking, wow. here we go again. why can’t ANYTHING just be effing EASY this year?

Here's her video. It's about abortion, rape, art and humor, at least that's the title of her blog. Warning adult subject matter and all that jazz.



The song is poppy and upbeat, nice hook, but dated and a bit tired. The video looked like a Saturday morning kids' TV sketch with added ass-rape and coathanger abortions. A bit of a mixed bag, I thought. Ironic, yes. I got it, but do I want it?

The bass-player's hot, though.

I'm big on condemning censorship, but on the other hand I can't work up a flying fart about the NME etc refusing to promote the song. We have a fundamental right to speak, but no one has a fundamental right to using someone else's property to get heard. If it pisses off their readership, they probably won't want to run it. Boo hoo.

Offensive? Censored? Mr Big stamping out the struggling little guy?

Snooziferous?

Form 696

The Guardian reported today on another little chip off the freedoms of British folk. I'm beginning to think the British government has a bit of a thing about not letting people do what they want. I've mentioned it before.
The Guardian says:

It sounds like an innocuous piece of paperwork, but in the last two months "Stop form 696!" has become the rallying cry of the live music industry. Risk assessment form 696 is used by the Metropolitan police when trouble is expected at a gig or club. It requests information about performers and audience members from the licensee. Failure to submit it could result in six months in jail or a £20,000 fine.

Form 696 has been approved by all 21 London councils, and its use could soon spread to the rest of the UK. It has attracted criticism not least because it is bureaucratic: while it has now been cut from eight pages to four, it still demands every performer's name, address, date of birth and phone number. It's hard enough to get a musician to answer the phone, let alone fill in a mini-census every time they perform.

Form 696's ulterior motives have also raised concerns. One question on the eight page version suggested it was being used to racially profile audiences: "Is there a particular ethnic group attending? If 'yes', please state group."

Is a particular ethnic group attending? What's it to you, PC Plod?

It's difficult to think of a counter to this insanity. After all, live music is a business, not a gathering of free speech enthusiasts, and all governments have the right to regulate commerce - although you'd think they'd regulate the real thugs first, like banks and credit card issuers, and leave musicians alone for a while.

I keep on getting the eerie feeling that this isn't the same world I grew up in. And it's not Al Qa'ida that's wrecking it.

Thanks to C for the heads up on this article.

More rants on our shrinking freedoms

Oh, and while I'm ranting:

In September 2007, I was telling my blog how pleased I was to become a citizen of the US. In January 2009, my government is telling the newsmedia that it tortures people. Not that it's been accused of it, or there's-a-fine-line-and-we're-good-guys-we-don't-cross-it, or ho-ho-nobody-calls-that-torture-it-hardly-even-tickles, or well-I-had-to-do-it-because-otherwise-he-would-have-blown-up-your-crippled-mother-and-your-puppy, just "yeah, we tortured the guy". Gee, thanks. (Obama's Torture Dilemma - Newsweek)

And back in Blighty, there's a move afoot to make buying a train ticket a contract that you agree to be searched by transport police. (Train Travel Only If You're Searched - Metro.)

Summary of where we are, freedom-of-speechwise

Where are, freedom-of-speechwise? The answer is, in deep... oh, I give in ...doo-doo.

I don't know why so many freedoms seem to be in the process of being reversed right now. I've seen a few articles blaming what Americans call Baby Boomers, i.e. me, for everything - breathing too much, consuming too much, warming the planet too much and the cardinal sin of all, hanging around existing when there are younger people who need the money and the spotlight.

But I haven't, and don't know anybody my age who has, found the entire planet suddenly so thoroughly riddled with filth that only the government could possibly deal with it, and therefore complained to Our Overlords about it. So who is doing the complaining?

Much of the territory won by the civil rights movement seems still to be solid ground, but it appears that one of the 'rights' won by the general population, the freedom to think and read about things in the privacy of your own home - is now becoming illegal. Since there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that reading or viewing material (produced without harm to others) leads anybody even halfway sane to harm someone else, I don't see why I'm being told I cannot read some material I may choose to read.

I'm flabbergasted at the witch-hunting of "child porn" and "extreme porn" in America, Australia and the UK recently. It's a Moral Panic, the new Satanic Sacrifice Scare, and we're all to believe that if someone sees a picture of (nonexistent non-humans) Lisa Simpson and Bart Simpson getting it on [1] they'll immediately turn into a childpornomaniac and rape the entire preschool, or if they see a thirty year old album cover with a young girl on it [2] the whole internet needs to be censored by the goverment [3], or if they read about a pop group being murdered [4] the writer - note, writer, not artist or photographer - can be charged with obscenity in the written word for the first time since 1991, and in so doing help prop up a badly-broken law that will make possession of pictures of consensual BDSM couples punishable by jail time [5].

America has the First amendment. It doesn't actually work that well in protecting freedom of speech - it's been nullified too many times - but it's nice to have a piece of paper you can point at during times like these. Britain's got nothing except its perennial Nanny Class, and apparently once again, they know what's good for us.

[1] Sex, censorship, and the Net - Info World
[2] Wikipedia Article Censored in UK for the First Time - PC World
[3] Me
[4]Blogger 'wrote of murdering Girls Aloud' - Independent (Contains the strange sub-heading "Case marks first time 1959 Obscene Publications Act has been applied to internet" but does not explain what part of the internet was deemed obscene in 1959. I think I know what it means, though.)
[5] 'Extreme porn' law could criminalise millions: Here come illegal pictures of legal activity - The Register

How many times do I have to ask you: Won't Someone Think of the Children?

"Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds." Thurgood Marshall, 1969

My new adopted country has done some strange things and holds a few oddball beliefs that cause me to cringe, but whenever I look back at Good Old Blighty I'm amazed at the stupid that emanates from the kingdom. Given that most – well, many – Brits are reasonable and educated people, I can't understand how it perpetually gets the governments it gets.

In the news today is Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary (even his name is Orwellian). His plan is to censor the internet to protect us from ourselves.

“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”

No one would take this utter bullshit seriously if Andy didn't drive it home by declaring we Have To Take This Step To Protect The Children. If you don’t agree, you must be a pedophile. And the pedophile is the boogieman of modern British morality tales.

It worries me - like anybody with children,” he says. “Leaving your child for two hours completely unregulated on the internet is not something you can do."

That's true. And no parent would do it, I hope, particularly as there are hundreds of programs and filters and parental controls you can fit on your computer to prevent your children from accessing sites you do not approve of. Programs that work by preventing the content from arriving on your own computer. Not ones that work by preventing the content from existing, or from arriving at anyone in Britain's computers. Or…wait:

“The change of administration is a big moment. We have got a real opportunity to make common cause,” he says. “The more we seek international solutions to this stuff – the UK and the US working together – the more that an international norm will set an industry norm.”

Make that anybody in Britain's and anybody in America's computers. Andy thinks big.

Do you want your access to information controlled by a man who says,

“If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now."

- apparently quite unaware that the "people who created the internet" were the American Government and had nothing to say to about creating a space that governments couldn't reach?

Most of the comments on the Daily Telegraph interview with this idiot say either that Something Should Be Done but this isn't the way to do it, or say that his idea won't work.

Alas, it will work, if the daft sod can muster the political will to get it done. He does not have to go after the 1.8 billion websites, hosted worldwide and changing on a regular basis. He only has to tell the handful of British ISPs they are out of business if they don't censor their traffic. They will be happy to do so. The only business a regular ISP values is commercial business. eBay keeps itself clean. Google censors itself for China, so you wouldn't see any problems there. Amazon is nice. Your blog might not be nice, but an ISP doesn't care about your blog, or your need for blogs. Why should they care if you are no longer able to access Furry websites? Why would it bother, say, Tiscali if you were a young gay man who cannot find access to a safe sex website? And if a kid is looking up breastfeeding to learn more about what his mother is doing with his new little brother, screw him. He won't have any money until he's 18 so he doesn't need access to information. Think I'm joking? Facebook is in the news this week because of its ban on pictures of breastfeeding. Their definition of indecency is apparently a visible areola.

Australia is planning to ban thousands of websites. Only the other day an unelected British body made a decision about a picture of a 30 year old album cover, never declared illegal, suggesting that it damn well oughta be illegal. By some ill-thought out crapulousness of British law, it was in this body's power to stop almost all ISPs in Britain from displaying that picture (or in fact the web page on which the picture was displayed, largely concerning how controversial the image was). (Scorpions cover controversy). The government can do it, all right.

But, I hear someone say, surely Something Must Be Done? Hardly. There isn't that much legal 'harmful' material on the internet, anyway. Most things that are 'harmful' (such as pedophilia) are already illegal. In England (I don't know so much about Scotland) almost any activity you can imagine is either compulsory or illegal, so websites which display the latter are already subject to prosecution. Anyone in the wider world who has travelled to England to take advantage of suing under the most repressive libel laws in the western world, or who owns what is now being known as "extreme porn", or has considered posting on his or her website or blog any of thousands of proscribed topics, already knows that. New laws aren't needed to keep illegal content off the web.

The reason the British government wants to censor the internet is not because children are dying in agony all over its anarchic frontier. They aren't. The Won't Someone Think of the Children meme is getting old. The government wants to control the internet because it wants to control you. It has not changed its view since it asked the public if Lady Chatterley was the sort of book you'd want your wives or servants to read. It considers you a minor, a ward of the state. It believes you need its protection or there will be tears before bedtime. The thought that you might give or receive information it has not vetted is making it squirm in horror. It will be happy when you are required to have an ID card and you have to give the number and add your biometrics before you can visit the internet, and it will monitor your access the way it monitors your emails and your phone calls.

There's no question who is going to define what this useless twat calls the "wider public interest" – he is, with his pet think tanks of bishops and assorted young crazies. Your narrow private interest, your political party, your kink, your foreign cause, your children talking about their activities – will all be monitored and assessed by people who think free speech is dangerous.

Free speech is not dangerous. It is the only system that works

Wrongness, Bambi and Hubris

The Greeks had a word for this but I don't remember what it is. Hubris?

Two recent news stories in the LA Times about a pornography trial. The first one was headlined
Trial will see hours of hard-core fetish pornography and ran on June 8th 2008.

Ira Isaacs, a filmmaker whose films feature bestiality and defecation, says he has the right to produce art under the 1st amendment. The U.S. Department of Justice says the material is obscene.

For jurors to determine whether Isaacs' work is obscene, they will view hours of hard-core pornography so degrading that in one film, an actress cries throughout, prosecutors said in court papers. (LA Times)

So, a jury is going to have to watch hours and hours of his stuff to see if it has any literary, scientific or artistic value. Poor jury; I'm pro-pornography usually but from the verbal sketch of Ira Isaacs in the paper I think I'd be ready to strangle laughing boy after the first fifteen minutes. Anyway, justice and all that stuff. On with the porn show.

But wait, what's this paragraph?

His involvement in the case may be a stroke of luck for Isaacs. That is because Kozinski is seen as a staunch defender of free speech. When he learned that there were filters banning pornography and other materials from computers in the appeals court's Pasadena offices, he led a successful effort to have the filters removed."I did some rabble-rousing about it," Kozinski said in a brief interview last week. (LA Times)

The judge was angry over not being able to see porn in his office? Well, I thought, I can see that. We all have to do "research" on our cases. I know I do, though it usually involves insisting on having work access to sites with pictures of rock stars. Filters are a notoriously blunt instrument and block access to all kinds of legit sites.

An article, also in the LA Times, a few days later, cleared up any misconceptions I may have had over that paragraph. Its headline was Judge Alex Kozinski recuses himself from obscenity trial and it ran on June 14th 2008.

On Wednesday, Kozinski suspended the trial of Hollywood filmmaker Ira Isaacs to allow the prosecutor to explore what he saw as "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."
Many of the items on the website, some of which the judge said he received and sent via e-mail, are intended to be crudely humorous. Among other items were a photo of two nude women painted to look like cows, a video of an encounter between a half-dressed man and a sexually aroused farm animal, a striptease slide show featuring a transsexual, a series of photos of women's crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear and a step-by-step pictorial of a woman shaving her pubic hair. (LA Times)

Hahaha. Pwned, as they say these days. If he was emailing/uploading that kind of thing, I guess he really didn't want filters on his web access.

Looking at the list of crap allegedly on the judge's website, I do believe his story that this was "stored"material that had been "emailed" to him, some of which was "uploaded by accident".

People do, and I'm not being sarcastic here, email me stuff like this all the time. Email forwards are a pestilence, a sort of infection that you can't help getting and you almost can't help passing on. There's two major kinds, as far as I can see – the funny/sick/sexual kind and the recipes, prayers and 'aren't-men-stupid' kind. The first kind is usually just called "wrongness" and seems to be sent in the same spirit small boys encourage other small boys to eat worms. The second type is sent to encourage sisterhood, and goes by the name "Bambi Mail".

I guess the judge is more of a small boy than a sister.

PS Dear Judge, I have some great Wrongness forwards if you send me your email address.

Pitchfork and torches time!

You know those women who talk to other women through the stall dividers in women's restrooms? Well, they should be banned. Banned, banned, bannedity-banned. And because they should be banned, I want you to pay for policecritters to patrol women's restrooms and toss 'em in the pokey. Because women in women's restrooms say bad things about people, and that's bad. And I shouldn't have to put up with it. And if I shouldn't have to put up with it, it should be against the law.



The LA Times had an Op-Ed article on Saturday called Douse the online flamers which took something close to the above and ran with it. It's by Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur, which I haven't read but I'm sure I don't like. Apparently people are saying bad things about other people on teh intarwebs, so it should be banned. Not sure exactly what: the internet, people, badness. Something has to be banned. Oh, it's "anonymity", apparently. Needs to be banned. He begins by referencing some Web Creation Myth only he is privy to, "the innocent dawn of the Internet Age" when "the idea that we might all be anonymous on the Web promised infinite intellectual freedom. Unfortunately, however, that promise hasn't been realized."

It hasn't? Oh noes! Write a nice print book about it, Andrew! Oh, you already did.

The article goes on, "[t]oday, too many anonymous Internet users are posting hateful content about their neighbors, classmates and co-workers; today, online media is an increasingly shadowy, vertiginous environment in which it is becoming harder and harder to know other people's real identities."

Evidently, everybody but me is spending their time hatin' on each other. (And I'm not doing so well either.)

Like this: "the case of a couple of female Yale Law School students whose reputations have been eternally sullied on an online bulletin board called AutoAdmit by "Sleazy Z," "hitlerhitlerhitler," "The Ayatollah of Rock-n-Rollah" and others. Having been publicly accused of lesbianism with the dean of admissions at Yale Law School, possessing "large false breasts" and indulging in exhibitionistic group sex, the two women filed an amended complaint...in...Court."

ZOMG! The internet has enabled rude people to be rude about people! Anonymously. And "eternally". Up until now there must never have been an avenue for expressing rudeness. Then the internet comes along and enables hate. Stupid internet. I knew there was something wrong with it.

Being accused by people called hitlerhitlerhitler of having unfeasibly large breasts must be an incredible burden, because of course, everyone on the planet is going to prefer siding with someone called hitlerhitlerhitler on the prestigious AutoAdmit bulletin board over siding with you.

He goes through two more cases. One, unfortunately, resulted in a suicide – it was a tiff between neighbors, a type of personal interaction that clearly was possible only after the invention of Internet Explorer 7 – and one was a fight on Yahoo. Have you ever been on Yahoo? Have you ever even heard of Yahoo? Don't see many hands up there. I have – I'm member of more than twenty Yahoo groups and we've had some knock-down-drag-out fights there, all of which would have been exactly the same, but much, much worse, if they'd been a fight at the Women's Institute, or the Church fete, or the school rummage sale. In fact, the major difference between a storm in a teapot and a storm in a Yahoo group is the wind speeds in a teapot are far higher.

After that thorough review of the hate coursing through the system of tubes we hold dear, he concludes, "these cases indicate that the U.S. Supreme Court soon might need to rethink the civic value of anonymous speech in the digital age. Today, when cowardly anonymity is souring Internet discourse, it really is hard to understand how anonymous speech is vital to a free society."

Yeah, freedom of speech sucks. Whose idea was it anyway? People only use it to hurt each other. Or they do nowadays. It's not clear from the article, but it looks like they didn't before the invention of the internet. Clearly punishing the internet is the way to go.

So what should we do about it, pundit? Apparently we should introduce "more legislation to punish anonymous sadists whose online lies are intended to wreck the reputations and mental health of innocent Americans."

Or alternatively, we could teach innocent Americans the rhyme about sticks and stones. Either way. Your call.