When Banning Something Spikes
Interest or Tramples on Freedom

One of the surest ways to spike people’s interest in something: try to ban it. Yet, despite spectacular historical failures (see Prohibition, the War on Drugs, etc) there’s always a new attempt at legislating on behavior or to eliminate competition through public policy.
Corporations are rarely hurt by such foolish endeavors, of course. They simply pay a token of their profits for the right of meeting a demand that’s essentially conditioned by people’s prerogative.
Rules are intrinsic to living in society. Yet there’s the majority’s rights, as in control over guns or food production, and what’s up to the individual, and there should be no confusion about the two.
The Internet seems to be but the latest battleground of those who feel threatened by the right of anyone else to express themselves, even if their rhetoric is divisive and intolerant and as long as it remains basically that: rhetoric.
THE UNSAVORY SOPA
What seems ever clearer is that, behind all the, well, rhetoric of controlling so-called hate speech online, there’s a bigger, much more sinister attempt by media corporations to own, control and profit from Continue reading →