As for Iraq, sounds like your problem is with your own country's leadership, really, not with Bush. Sounds like you can't get your way, and that your fellow Australians don't do what you wish.

I don't say he “can't” comment, but I push back. I don't support the ideas of Kirk, but he's not my rep, I didn't vote for him, he's not in my state. I *do* respect the will of the voters he *does* represent.

Did Rep. Kirk succeed in passing a federal law that limits all our rights? No, he did not. He is drafting legislation, as one representative in one state, but I don't see that it has succeeded even on a state level, let alone a national level. It fulfills the need of letting people express themselves, a kind of public forum, that they wish these powerfully influential media devices called virtual worlds to have some regulation. I sure don't have a problem with them exercising that will, and having that freedom of expression.

So often those on the hard left want freedom of expression for themselves, and not for others, and want to express, but never be pushed back.

It's not about “technology” — which you invoke to hide behind “technical” solutions when in fact it is a social issue. No, you do not get to impose your hedonism and licentiousness on others. That's as oppressive as them imposing their more conservative lifestyle on you.

And the point of the OP's post is to try to STOP what is the expression of the electorate of another country, and I'm sorry, but they DO NOT get to do that. Not in the name of technology, of “global” industry or any other fake utopian notion.

Personally, I find the suggestion that no-one can commentate on the politics of another country a little strange, as JJ alluded to.

It's a position riddled with double standards given how often the current US President and his ambassador have inserted themselves into Australian political debate, particularly in regard to Iraq and the US-instigated economic issues affecting the world at present.

I'm a US citizen and I think what Rep. Kirk is proposing is “loco” and shows a fundamental problem with our elected officials not understanding technology.

<rant response>
Also, I have no problems if media outlets from other countries report on and analyze the happenings of our country. In the age of global communities, why is anyone's ideas about government out of bounds simply because they aren't a citizen? Especially when it is an issue that affects an entire industry…
</rant response>

If the people in a certain locality or state wish to place more restrictions on the Internet than they do in other places, say, in certain areas that are more conservative and religious, and not urban, sophisticated, etc. as in others, that's their call. They get to do that with their elected representatives in a democracy. If this legislation appears to impact the First Amendment in ways that seem damaging, you can be sure in our litigious and lawsuit-happy country, that some lawyer or NGO somewhere will campaign on this.

You fail to grasp that societies *can and will* regulate virtual worlds. They get to do this if they are free. Virtual worlds do not trump national sovereignty or states' rights just because they cross frontiers electronically. Freedom means freedom to restrict, for people who wish it. After all, if some locality wishes to create penalties or bars to children accessing the often very lewd and extreme content in SL, that's their right. It doesn't impact *your* right to access it as it is not a global law.

We don't need *you* to spin out ideas about “what are better ideas for Congress to spend its funds on*. Congress itself gets to do that because it is elected by the people of the states of the United States of America. You have your own elected representatives, work with them to achieve your goals.

This recurring geek notion that you can overthrow elected democracy wherever you feel like it in the name of some utopian global “autonomous zone” is deeply misguided. You can't. And you won't.

The one area where repeated efforts to restrict the Internet have occurred in many countries, and particularly in Europe, where you might turn your sites if you have the itch to play net nanny on other people, is on children. There is a great deal of alarm and concern — and rightly so — about the effect of the Internet on children. And that's ok. That's what societies do, if they are civilized, they protect their children.

I always have to wonder why people like you go through these American-hating spasms. You have your own country. You have conservatives in your own country that you need to persuade of your ideas that you haven't persuaded. Work on that. Rep. Kirk is merely a Rep. for those people who elected him. He's hardly representative of the Congress, let alone the country. And legislation that he and others proposes often never passes — and yet it is their right to propose it, and have this public debate about how virtual worlds should be regulated.