Here at TLF we often worry about government encroachment on the latest and greatest technologies. It seems that federal regulators want to control everything that has to do with our beloved and still largely free Internet—how data moves around, whether or not we can encrypt it, how long it is stored, who owns it, and how we can get their hands on it.
But even relatively low-tech means of communication are under attack too, or at least are rumored to be.
Lately there has been so much clamor over the Fairness Doctrine—an abandoned rule mandating equal time for all sides of controversial issues discussed on broadcast radio & television—that the Obama administration has stated publicly that the President is against reviving it.
Even so, the mascot of the anti-Fairness Doctrine crowd, Rush Limbaugh, has voiced his opinion in an op-ed in today’s The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Limbaugh’s position is obvious: he doesn’t like the Fairness Doctrine. Not because he’s against fairness or thinks that liberal voices shouldn’t be heard, but because, as he puts it, “The dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.