Many in Second Life™ were and are pro Net Neutrality. The ideas associated with the words Net Neutrality are noble sounding but dig in and you find they are out of touch with the reality of the laws being passed and basic economics.

(image gone…) Bound III by Sacha Audeburgh, on Flickr

In America we are seeing the US State Dept. making the first rules to kill free speech on the Internet and turn it into Government Approved Speech ONLY. Of course, they have chosen an emotional issue many liberals can get behind: gun control. Is it OK to ban this type of speech? I suspect many liberals will think so. They are banning hate speech, the first step and that OK with many, now gun related speech, don’t you wonder what is next? Obviously free speech is going away, if we allow this trend to continue. 

The proposed rules basically say if one posts anything on the Internet about guns or ammunition they must first have government approval or face a US$1 million fine and/or 20 years in jail.

First they came for _____, then they came for ____ … and finally they came for me ….

See the Washington Examiner: NRA: Gun blogs, videos, web forums threatened by Obama regulation. The article will point you to the June 3^rd Federal Register. The Register is where all new US Regulations proposed and approved are published, by law they have to be published before they can be enforced. Courts have repeatedly found in favor of violators of unpublished laws and dismissed the charges.

The current regulation as proposed is 14 pages long. Obfuscation. The Examiner has NRA’s translation and pertinent quotes from the regulation. This is the link to the pertinent part of the Register. (Federal Register / Vol. 80, No. 106 / Wednesday, June 3, 2015 / Proposed Rules – Page 31525) You can decide how accurate the NRA is or isn’t. But, the Obama and Democrat tactic of writing long technical and highly referenced regulations is common. It looks like a deliberate attempt to avoid transparency and sneak things through.

The new regulation would affect the Internet and public libraries and other public sources of information. In other words all outlets for free speech.

The State will make the regulation and the FCC via the Net Neutrality regulations they adopted will enforce the new regs. The bureaucracy is regulating our speech. We don’t get to vote on the issues nor is the media covering the loss of our freedoms. Have you heard or seen any of this reported anywhere in our daily news stream?

If you want to remain free, you are going to have to become politically active.