More on "Censorship"...

[Jim Herrmann]

Thank you Jason for reframing the issue in such an articulate manner. 
 It really is about the corporate media conglomerates weilding it's 
mighty economic power to punish an individual's freedom of speech.  Just 
like the DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, DRM and the other nasty three and four letter 
words that infringe on the freedom of individual rights.  

However, that being said, I think that in the end this will go down in 
history as one of the greatest marketing ploys of any band, at least any 
country band.  Censorship never works in the end.  How many of you would 
have ever even heard of "A Catcher in the Rye" had it not been banned? 
 How about Salmon Rushdie's Satanic Verses?  Censoring someone or 
something usually makes them martyrs.  When you consider that 80% of the 
world's population is against the war in Iraq, and would be sympathetic 
to someone being ashamed that the (p)resident (and the vice (p)resident 
for that matter which is wholly unconstitutional but that's for another 
thread) is from their home state, I'd say that they are playing the odds 
pretty well.  The Dixie Chicks were big in country and bluegrass music 
circles, but now they are world famous!  They will go down in history! 
 I'm telling you, censorship nearly always backfires.

Just like Microsoft's FUD about Linux has backfired, this childish 
behavior on the part of corporate media will backfire.  Like the saying 
goes, there's no such thing as bad press.

My $.02
Jim Herrmann

Jason Clinton wrote:

> In defense of Jeremy's post:
>
> The majority of radio stations in America are owned by these two 
> corporations in question. So, in this case, because our government 
> failed to prevent a media monopoly from being created in radio 
> broadcasting, our government has effectively "allowed" a small group 
> of invididuals to hold control over the reigns of radio media.
>
> What the Dixie Chic said was with in her rights. What the two mega 
> media conglomerates did was within their rights. The problem lies in 
> that Big Radio is more powerful that little Dixie Chic. When an entity 
> with lots of power crushes one with a little because they don't agree, 
> it's called oppression. When it's institutionalized: It's censorship. 
> Censorship is NOT limited to government.
>
> IMHO, the idea of "corportate right to free speech" is just 
> ass-back-wards. There are two forces at work in economics: the 
> employers and the laborers. Our constitution grants individuals 
> (laborers) certain human rights to citizens of this country. It DOES 
> NOT grant these rights to organizations (corporations) /at the expense 
> of individuals/. To see how this thinking can go horribly wrong, see 
> these two links:
>
> http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/01/11/1848248.shtml?tid=123
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/30/1444252&mode=nested&tid=158&tid=98&tid=123
>
> What happened isn't illegal. It IS something that concerned citizens 
> SHOULD do something about and for that, I applaud Jeremy's efforts.
>