Blog censorship

This government has become worryingly authoritarian, their attitude seems to be that the public cannot be trusted to eat, drink, drive or smoke without warnings, fines and controls. Now their beady little eyes have alighted on an area where freedom of speech seems unfettered, the blogosphere. The government can exercise a degree of control over the traditional media whether that be via a Quango such as the Press Complaints Commission or Ofcom or via putting a party supporter in charge, such as at the BBC. The blogosphere can say whatever they want to say and blogs such as Guido Fawkes and Devils Kitchen are therefore hugely popular. These blogs, and others, are guilty of not following the "narrative" as set by the government and so must be regulated and restricted.

So the news that the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee was looking into setting up an "independent" internet watchdog, with responsibility for drawing up guidelines that social networking sites, the blogosphere, website owners and search engines would be expected to follow; did not exactly cause me to sit up in shock. You can read the whole report here.

The initial proposals would set-up a new internet watchdog which would operate in a similar way to other industry bodies such as the Press Complaints Commission, covering accuracy, discrimination and intrusion. The watchdog would not (at least initially) have any statutory powers to impose fines but would investigate complaints and most likely publish its decisions in instances when its guidelines have been breached. In time the "light-touch" regime will be deemed to have failed and so a Labour government would say that it was being forced to bring in legislation to regulate the dangerous blogosphere. This legislation would be justified as being for "the protection of children" and the "prevention of terrorism" and "hate speech". All blogs will need to be approved by the regulator, for which a fee would be paid. So the good and the investigative blogs that have uncovered the sleaze of this Labour government would be shut down, so keeping the glare of publicity off of the sleaze merchants. The Quango would be manned by the usual collection of left-wing supporters of anti-thought crime legislation who would positively get off on being able to further restrict real free-speech in this Country. Be of no doubt that this proposal is about control and censorship, job creation for like minded in the new regulatory body and of course raising money through registration fees.