Pinto Balsemão protect freedom at all costs

[ExpertNovice]

What a way to "stick it" to big business and help the little guy.

http://www.epceurope.org/issues/Francis..._Balsemao_TVWF_Speech_20.09.2005.shtml

In this speech Chairman Balsemão talks about and defends:

• freedom of speech
  freedom of expression
  preserve the intrinsic freedom of the internet
  free from government control
  Once freedoms are cut it is almost impossible to retrieve them
  freedom of religion
  freedom of the press

He also states that we must protect ourselves from government regulation in order to preserve these freedoms and maintain profits.

But to play those roles properly, we must be able to exercise the freedom of speech - whether in print, or increasingly online - whether through the written word, sound, photographs, video or info-graphics ?independently, free from government control - and to do so profitably.

Profitability is particularly important when the landscape is changing so fast. We strive to deliver sensible self-regulation and appropriate protection for our consumers but we must operate on level fields of competition.

I particularly like the concept of self-regulation to operate on level fields of competition. If they were talking football it would be easy. Any time a team scores more than the other team simply invoke the rule that requires the winning team from playing their first string, then their second string, etc. until the teams have the same score.



That was in September. In December he want's to create regulations that stop internet search engines from making money
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:zE...+Pinto+Balsem%C3%A3o+%2Binternet&hl=en

Tuesday that they cannot keep allowing Internet search engines such as Google Inc. to make money from their content.

Google spokesman Steve Langdon said: "Search engines do not reproduce content. They help users find content by pointing to where it exists on the Web." Google removes Web sites from its news index if a publisher doesn't want the content listed, Langdon said.

Since the publishers can request that their content not be listed then they are getting free advertising from search engines such as Google which merely point to the story.

It seems that the European publishers are not interested in freedoms but would want to make it expensive and difficult to find dissenting news being spewed forth from the "mainstream" media.

Lest someone think the conservatives are wanting to stifle our freedoms please understand that Pinto Balsemão is the founder of the Socialist Democratic Party and is not a conservative.

 

[dmcanally]

I find it funny that a socialist democrat is preaching freedom.