Free to Blog...

I was fixin’ dinner and I got to thinking about this article I read. So I just had to say something about it.

People… it’s not a cliché. We have a lot of freedoms in this country that we take for granted. We can choose to do, or not to do, so many things. As long as we are within the boundaries of our laws we pretty much can do whatever we want.

Take blogging for instance. I can write or post most anything that I want on the internet. I can curse, swear, discuss politics or religion; I can support or condemn anyone or anything. I can offend my readers or I can encourage and entertain them. Whatever I want to do with my blog I can do it. And the thing about it is that I am doing what I want and how I want to do it for free!

Before blogging was invented I used to write e-mail after e-mail about the same type of stuff that I post now, and I would spam my friends and family with it all. The web log has given me a new lease on life. *wink*

As with any good thing there can be bad things too. Blogging can get out of hand and it can get raunchy. I have run across a few blogs that were both. From my ethical point of view, I don’t think that these kinds of bad blogs should be on the internet for just anyone to stumble across them.

Technology is pretty much exercising every bit of our freedom of speech here in America. Now, more than ever, America’s voices are crisscrossing the country and the world. Even the world is developing its own independent voices…

Wait… Wait… Wait a minute here! Not everyone has a free voice. Everyone with internet access does not mean that everyone has equal freedoms.

There are 62 people currently in jail in China due to violations of Chinese internet content laws. Did you hear that Yahoo turned Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, in to the Chinese government and Mr. Shi was hauled off to jail by the authorities? The improper content, according to Chinese law, was contained in an e-mail that Shi had sent.

Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google have offices over there in China. Yahoo has filters on its search engines that do not allow you to search for Chinese words like “Free Tibet”. Currently, Google doesn’t have similar filters on its engines (yet), but the Chinese government’s system blocks many of its web pages. The potential of millions upon millions of internet users are too much to pass up for these corporate internet giants.

All I’ll say right now about our foreign policy with the Chinese government is that China seems to get to have her cake and eat it too. And corporate America is serving it to her with ice cream on top.

later…