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Clearly, Mrs Mikko does not understand anything about the recent history of her own country, and what Estonia went through under the jackboots of various other fascist scumbags over the last 100-odd years. I can’t credit that an Estonian person, or indeed one from any previously-grievously-oppressed nation, should want to even think of returning to something like the status quo ante.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3059617/Euro-MPs-to-vote-on-anonymous-blog-ban.html
Euro MPs to vote on anonymous blog ban
Euro MPs are preparing to vote on proposals for European Union regulation of blogs with the aim of countering a “dangerous” and unregulated blogosphere.
Marianne Mikko, an Estonian centre-left MEP, is concerned that growing numbers of blogs are being used by individuals with “malicious intentions or hidden agendas”.
“The blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them,” she said.
Mrs Mikko has proposed that bloggers should be required to identify themselves and that some popular blogs should come with a declaration of interests.
“We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source,” she said.
Chris Heaton Harris, a British Conservative Euro MP, has rejected any moves to “regulate and restrict independent media sources”.
“Mrs Mikko obviously does not understand that blogs have become the life blood of a vibrant democracy,” he said.
“I hope these proposals are kicked out.”
Thursday’s vote in the European Parliament is not legally binding but is an indicator of growing EU concern over the influence of blogs on the internet.
A recent internal European Commission report, leaked three weeks ago, found that the EU was losing the battle for hearts and minds online.
“Blog activity remains overwhelmingly negative,” it said.
Stupid (or else evil) woman. The whole point about bolgs is that the blogger WANTS you to know “who is writing and why.”
[…] Brisk and uncompromising responses to the proposal to regulate them from Mr. Eugenides and David Davis of the Libertarian […]
Presumably, as the blogosphere is an impediment to the Enemy Class’ plans, they will inevitably have a go at controlling it.
We will know they are coming for us when the tame media start peddling endless scare stories about paedophiles, terrorists, drug dealers and “racists” blogging on the internet.
With out going as afar as China or Iran, I can’t see them having complete success. However, here are some thoughts (of a layperson) as to what they could do:-
They could ban advertising on unregulated sites with member state domain names. Also, they could require public sector bodies (eg universities) to block access to unregulated sites from their own computers. They could reverse the burden of proof in defamation type legal actions so that bloggers had to prove that everything on their site was true.
Of course, blogs worth reading would just migrate to US and other domains. I can’t see the EU successfully creating a Chinese wall to keep us all in the dark on the internet.
Oh great, there goes that word again: “unregulated”. The word that parasitical politicians the world over use to justify all manner of privacy invasion and violation of Natural Law.