I put it up there because I'm sick of hearing that disagreement is treason from people on this site.
1: The truth is only what you can prove. Evidence of that is in the Creationism vs Evolution thread, the 10,000 year old earth thread, and every single Iraq War thread. Hell, I know a forensic accountant that can "prove" that Gone With The Wind, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and every Movie ever made made NO profit at all. If you think that there is fidelity in anything other than pure mathematics, you've got your head in the sand. Versions of the truth are as numerous as the people who hear a story.
2: That was one of the errors I had thought I had addressed, but it seems I edited it out... oops on my part. Even still, maybe I'm one of the few that remembers surfing to sites before Friendly Domain names became possible but I know that the net was a real thing that was accessible in 1989 to some people that had Freenet Subscriptions (when you'd have to surf by proxy and wait for about 5-6 minutes for a page to load). That constitutes 3 decades (80's, 90's, 00's). It wasn't exactly a cultural watershed like it is now (with MySpace in all it's News Corporation glory), but it was a subculture that was easily accessible by those who knew. The internet at large has existed in a publicly available form (ie. kermit, simple HTTP, Gopher, ftp, etc) since about 1985/6. The big internet explosion happened in about 1993/4, and that's at least 2 decades (90's, 00's) worth of cultural overhauling. Take it for what it's worth.
3: Dude, have you had your head in the sand for the last 8 years? There have been at least 4 attempts by a republican controlled House and Senate to regulate the Internet, and to trap and trace all YOUR movements on it. All your LEGAL movements on it, all your vowel movements on it... EVERYTHING. Remember Big Brother? Your friendly neighbourhood republican is behind that more than likely. The US government attempted to assert it's jurisdiction on any information passing through US company owned lines, and that is roughly 60% of data lines in the world. Regulation of the Internet is also impossible, it's one of the reasons thieves like Ebaumsworld.com can get away with theft of content. Attempting to regulate the Internet is tantamount to censorship... the same with films and books. There is a difference between publishing a book, and publishing a website. If you publish a book, that is a physical entity, costs money to make, move around, and sell; A web site however costs nothing other than the computer your time and creativity, and transmission bandwidth to run. You can literally hold several dozen books in compressed text format and it can be transferred to thousands of people without a problem, and for less than the cost of 1 hard cover book.
You have the ability to make your ideas known. Regulating the Net with Government trap and trace and "roving wire taps" which were actually passed with the USA PATRIOT act is censorship... It's not to reduce terrorism, it's about limiting your freedom of association and expression.
4: With that one comment, you've proved that you're not equipped to counter his ideas with real dialogue. Ted Nugent needs to pull himself out of the Alcohol and gun cleaner fuelled haze and look around for a little bit, or you need to know that he's not Conservative, he's big on gun rights, personal drug use rights, and that's about it. As for Rollins: The guy has his own show. You're not on it, but you can write to him with e-mail (and remember, Congress approved the creation of the internet with Al Gore's push... He might not have created the internet, but without him you wouldn't have a way to write here) and make your views known.
Try and bring along evidence of the Government not trying to regulate the Internet next time.
Just so you know:
CDA (portions overturned in 1996, 1997, amended in 2003 to remove unconstitutional portions)
COPA (Injunction 1998, 1999, Struck down 2003, and sent back to appeals courts in 2006 due to new language)
CIPA (Contested 2001, Found constitutional only because of reinterpretation of a passage which forbids libraries and other publicly available access points from filtering websites which are constitutionally protected... Libraries can still filter sites for children on whatever basis they choose unless they decide to forgo E-Rate funding,
THIS IS REGULATING THE INTERNET USING FEDERAL FUNDING AS A BARGAINING CHIP)
DOPA (Which has the ability to broadly remove the ability for users, not specifically Children, from accessing areas of the internet where they may be exposed to online predators. Not passed into law yet.)
Here you have 4 stabs at Republicans attempting to legislate morality on the internet. You have 4 attempts to remove parents out of the equation in favour of Governmental controls, and you also have 2 assaults, 1 attempt and 1 deflection of your rights to access information of your choosing.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Tuesday, December 12, 2006 6:43 PM
Transeat In Exemplum: Let this stand as the example.