By K. A. Laity
What is it with men and tubes? Particularly when they're men who hold powerful offices and feel the need to wield that power in a grandstanding gesture so everyone knows just what they have in their hands—it can be an embarrassing display.
It's Mad Men in a kind of perverse wish fulfillment for a time that never really existed except of course on television. But if they can send women back a few decades, it will be a first step in creating that paradise apparently.
The oppressive abortion laws passed in Oklahoma have apparently already give rise to copycat legislation in Texas. Never mind that regular access to birth control has made the abortion rates fall; it's the idea that women can just willy nilly start or stop a pregnancy that has these types in an uproar. Good god, what if women could just have sex whenever they wanted without having life-threatening consequences?! It would change everything…
But it's also worrisome when it comes to the intarwubs, AKA Ted's Tubes-not-Trucks, because the effects of this kind of über-management have even broader effect, including the inability to share outrage over the other kind of meddling. You know that a lot of this impulse comes from the internet being the last frontier (yeah, the ocean and the stars too, but I ain't going there). There are many men who dream of being marshals in this wild west. I wish we could just give them a big star and a pony, but they seem to prefer making legislation.
For example, New York Senator Chuck Schumer wants to get the FTC involved in Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps he's heard about these "Mafia Wars" from a constituent and wants to get all Elliott Ness on their asses. Either that or he couldn't work out the share options:
“The opt-out procedure is unclear, confusing, and you might even say hidden,” he said during a press conference.
I should friend Chuck on Facebook and see if he has one of those mad-as-hell status updates (COPY AND POST THIS AS YOUR STATUS IF YOU BELIEVE!!). Then I could explain to him why tedious government regulation that fails to understand what it is regulating—and how technology is changing—is worse than useless: it's harmful.
Case in point: the new Digital Economy Bill in the UK. Politicians knuckled under to entertainment lobbyists and election concerns to rush in bad legislation late at night with a flurry of amendments. Apparently there are already businesses shutting down their free WiFi for fear of being charged with copyright violation because they can't police the internet.
So put away your six-shooters and your stinkin' badges: there are already copyright laws to protect creators, there are already laws against a whole host of criminal activities. We don't need laws made by people who don't know the first thing about this frontier Saddle up and get out of town.
High Noon image via Wikipedia