Post-Virginia Blog Summit, bloggers on Capitol Hill are making the argument against regulation; an argument that seems to be winning the debate:
Bloggers at the hearing continued to air their reservations about any regulations, saying they would be difficult to implement and even trickier to enforce.
‘There isn’t a real connection between the effectiveness of a site and how much money is spent on it,’ said Duncan Black, who runs a current events blog called ‘Eschaton.’
How true, and especially the case amongst Virginia blogs. However, I was encouraged (amused slightly) that the best defense the blogosphere has isn’t so much the idea of free speech or a “marketplace of ideas,” but rather the incredible effort any regulation would require:
The politicians indicated sympathy for the bloggers’ arguments, adding that the need to police the ballooning blogosphere would be a mammoth task. Part of their reluctance to regulate seemed to stem from a lack of tech expertise. Rep. Bob Ney, the Ohio Republican who chairs the committee, called the issue “confusing” and “baffling.”
“I think it’s a blessing that we’ve managed to keep the heavy hand of regulation off the Internet,” Lofgren said. “When the government moves in to regulate the Internet, we’ll almost always get it wrong.”
Thus the libertarian argument for self-regulation is the only qualified solution.