~nokomis

EU wants to monitor your blog

A preposition regarding registration and supervision of bloggers has been voted in the European Parliament. The initiator Marianne Mikko, advocates this because she believes that bloggers can “ pollute ” cyberspace.

The preposition is meant to clearify the legal position of bloggers and to protect the “multitude of the media.” Media plays an important role to protect democracy, and blogs are an important contribution to the multitude. But they add that there exists a need to control that incorrect information isn’t spread.

“The blogosphere has so far been a place for good intentions and relatively honest purposes. But when blogging gets trivial, people with less principels wants to use this service. They are then in a position where they can do serious pollution to cyberspace. We already have too much spam, incorrect information and evil intents in cyberspace” says the Estonian initiator Marianne Mikko in a statement.

She wants a quality mark on the bloggs, in reality this means that she wants to know who writes what, and why.

- “If we see a name and a picture on the one who writes the blog, it will benefit the freedom of speech. If a blogger insults or manipulates we will be able to find out who stands behind the blog” says Marianne Mikko

Freedom of speech is being able to speak freely without censorship. The right to freedom of speech is guaranteed under international law through numerous human-rights instruments, notably under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, although implementation remains lacking in many countries. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes preferred, since the right is not confined to verbal speech but is understood to protect any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

No matter if we speak our mind on the streets - no matter if we speak our mind in a newspaper - no matter where we speak our mind we should have the right to say it. And something that really bugs me is WHO will DECIDE WHAT IS TRUE AND WHAT IS FALSE. And on what basis will they be able sort the opinions out? Do they mean that there is someone in the EU Parliament that holds the book of Ultimate Truth?

This is real life - there are no rights and wrongs - the world isn’t as simple as that. One persons truth can differ from another. And this is something that really can be seen in e.g POLITICS. There are no rights and wrongs in the opinions among politicians. Each party has the right to speak their minds. Why shouldn’t we?

And I don’t understand why blogs on the internet are such a big threat to “democracy” and to “disinformation”… What is next then? Shall the government monitor the newspapers/news broadcasts as well? Will they not stop until they supervise everything written and said. And I still wonder WHO will decide what’s right or wrong…

Where’s the world coming to?
And what scares me the most is that this law will be decided by old people who have no idea what exactly the internet and the blogosphere means to people…

Also: If this preposition will win; European internet users will have to pay to watch sites containing amateur work of art.. like eg. DEVIANTART or YOUTUBE. Because apparently amateur artists are "threatening" proffessional artists on the internet.. in some way....

Don't ask me how they are thinking..