And possibly demand a similar law in Palo Alto. I am sure their friends on the City Council would support it. That will make their censorship work much easier.
Posted by Bank, a member of the Barron Park School community, on May 24, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Wow. Should there be a test for elected officials? Start with:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Posted by Anon., a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on May 24, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Apparently you are so anxious about even the idea of censoring speech that you cannot even explain what you are talking about in your link. Maybe there ought to be a law that says if people cannot explain in reasonably understandable terms what they are talking about they cannot just post a link to someone else's words.
The link was: Ban Anonymous Online Speech
I think it is a bad idea, because it is not the anonymnity that is the problem, it is the content and judgement of most people's posts.
Also what this would do is to bolster more the current authority infrastructure and remove thinking from the issues. Just have some authority come in and say they are a doctor, lawyer, business person, pilot and they think they know better than the regular people. I don't think that is true - if an authority wants to express their POV, fine - do it on information not title or certification. How many times do we see experts that cause probems or miss avoiding them when they happen?
Posted by svatoid, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 24, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Bank--the article mentions that, but the desire of the council and the Weekly to keep everything vanilla, in order to further their agenda may trump that in Palo Alto
Posted by svatoid, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 24, 2012 at 2:06 pm
"Apparently you are so anxious about even the idea of censoring speech that you cannot even explain what you are talking about in your link." Maybe there ought to be a law that says if people cannot explain in reasonably understandable terms what they are talking about they cannot just post a link to someone else's words."
Obviously it is hard to convey sarcasm in online postings--my post was in that vein. The idea is ridiculous, but something IMHO the council and the Weekly would go for.
"Maybe there ought to be a law that says if people cannot explain in reasonably understandable terms what they are talking about they cannot just post a link to someone else's words."
So you are in favor of censorship under certain conditions??
Posted by Walter_E_Wallis, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 26, 2012 at 4:51 pm Walter_E_Wallis is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online
Perhaps they could CAPITALIZE ALL IDENTIFIED ON LINE SPEECH AND print all anonymous speech in lower case.
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