The Telecommunications Act of 1995
How could the US Congress have possibly thought this bill through?

by Matt Robesch
Raptorial

 

The Telocommunications Act. Have you read all of that thing? When you sent that e-message to the President telling him not to sign it, did you remember to mention your opposition to the future prospect of electronic junk mail? Neither did I. It may already be too late. That sucker passed and every rule we love or hate concerning the Internet is going to refer back to this document for years to come. For all we know, hundreds of e-mail commercials are being prepared and mailing lists are being thrown together.
Are you confident that the extremely wealthy men and women of the US Congress and the US Senate were conceiving or perceiving the full scope, the full meaning, of the Internet? Do you think these people really knew how much society is about to change due to this World Wide Web thing? And some people are already talking about what will replace the WWW! Many American politicians are still of the aging pre-boomer generation. They're probably terrified. People such as this (whether they grok the Internet to its fullest or not)... in the very least uptight about change, are the ones who voted for a communcations bill so important that it legislates, from now on, the relationship you will have with this computer screen your staring into right now.

This Telecommunications Act is simply HUGE. Do you know everything that's in it? Do you think everyone who voted for it read every word of the document and understood it before they made this monster into law? I doubt it. And yet, this document now rules the land.
This much has changed already: If and when you rub against the Telecommunications Act the wrong way (whether you are guilty or innocent) you will have to spend a fortune on lawyers to help you explain your side of the story in a court of law. Just last summmer, only very rarely were people brought to trial over things they did on their computer, in the privacy of their own home. In the future, addressing a judge, jury or magistrate... facing a prosecuting attorney... meeting with your lawyer to discuss Internet related issues will become much more common.

Now, thanks to President Bill and Co., you can't freely post anything on the web unless you know the legal ramifications first! Obey THE LAW. Then, and only then, are you free to post what you want.

Telecomm isn't about pornography. It's about control. Self control is ALWAYS better than government control. How could it be otherwise? But now the government controls the Internet. Does the government have the right to control how you interact with something that exists inside your own house? Did you even realize that yet another thing you do in the privacy of your own home has been legislated? I mean, in addition to not being able to alter your mind on your own easy chair? or (in some states) enjoy 'unacceptable' (but concentual) carnal pleasures with someone you love? There are probably 100... no 1,000... non-violent things you cannot do in your own house because some politician wrote 'officially' on some piece of paper that this was a no-no. Telecomm is another of one these intrusive laws. What does the Bill of Rights have to say about this? And at what point in time are we going to simply enjoy the document for what it is and NOT have to hire a fucking lawyer to protect our asses every time someone with a badge comes along and tells us, "You're under arrest for (place reason here) ?"

Consider how American citizens, in the volumes they are currently showing up in courts nowadays, are helping the politicians define the laws that are on the books. Why on earth do the defendants in highly interpretive legal cases have to pay one damned nickel for legal help? Defendants, by the time their five year old legal case finally gets to the US Supreme Court, are legislating. When their case gets overturned, setting a precedent, they shouldn't have to pay a lawyer. They should be collecting the same amount of money a US Senator makes. After all, five years is almost a Senate term and fine tuning one law in that time frame is more than most Senators do in six years.


Do we have to have rules for every damned thing? Couldn't all this have been avoided? Could the politicians have just let the Internet slip by unregulated and, say, done something truly important like balanced the federal budget? Wouldn't it have been nice if they spent their time elimating unemployment instead of eliminating freedom of computer speech? Why aren't they ending involuntary homelessness? Imagine if the official gang of Washington, DC had passed laws ending pollution entirely! There are many statistical, calculable social problems that need to be solved.
The Internet was merely a perceived problem, something that COULD have become a problem but hadn't yet. Politicians went after it with a vengeance and now Big Government is just a little bit bigger.