Accordingly, the restriction of progressive opinion may not first appear as a simple and crass corporate pronouncement, "We don't agree with your ideas, so we won't allow you to put them on the net." Such high-handedness would invite law-suits. Instead, dissenting individuals and non-profit organizations would simply be priced out of the internet, while the four-figure applications fees and three-figure monthly charges would be chump change for marketers and right-wing publications and foundations.
As it turned out, the attempt in the Bush administration to privatize the internet was met with massive public protest, as 99% of the messages to the FCC opposed the ending of "common carrier" rules.
So can we now be confident that our Constitutional guarantee of a "free press" (in contemporary terms, "free media") will be protected. Not necessarily. The internet, like the press and broadcast media will succumb to A. J. Leibling's rule: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." And so, if Rupert Murdoch, or Richard Mellon Scaiffe, or brothers Koch buy out the internet and then refuse access to "treasonous" progressives, then they will be doing so of their own free will. Thus, we will be told, will "freedom" of the internet be preserved. Right?
Of course, there will be no shutdown of the entire internet. As noted above, there is too much commercial investment involved. You will still be able to order from Victoria's Secret, Sears, Eddie Bauer and Amazon, etc. Also, Free Republic, The Drudge Report, and other right-wing sites will be safe. But individual entrepreneurial progressive sites such as this one, will be out of luck, and out in the cold.
The Henry II Ploy:
In Jean Anouilh's play, Becket, King Henry, having lost control of his one-time friend and current Archbishop, Thomas a' Becket, mutters to a bunch of his drunken buddies, "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
The rogues take this as a royal decree, and proceed to dispatch Becket in the cathedral.
Henry, of course, later denied he ever had such a horrible thing in mind.
These days, this is called "plausible deniability."
Similarly, one can imagine Donald Trump saying, "who will rid me of this meddlesome internet?"
If the word goes out from the highest offices to silence by sabotage the liberal/progressive voices in the internet, we can be confident that an impermeable curtain of "deniability" will be in place between those who initiate and those who execute this order.
Soon after that order is given, a new array of exotic and selective viruses and worms will infect and shut down "politically incorrect" web sites, sharing the fate of the Democratic Underground today. Meanwhile the commercial and right-wing sites will be unaffected.
If notice is made of this selectivity, presumptive blame will be placed upon "right wing zealots." Then (presumably) Rudy Giulini's Justice Department will promise "prompt and effective investigation" -- to be followed, of course, by no action at all.
The net effect will be that dissenting internet voices will be effectively silenced.
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