by Starvid
Thu Jun 26th, 2008 at 01:22:32 PM EST
On September 22 this fall, the European Parliament will vote on the legal position of the European Tribune and all other blogs. The resolution which will include measures to make legal action against blogs easier, regulate the content of blogs, and require licensing and registering to operate a blog is sponsored by Estonian Socialist MEP Marianne Mikko.

MEP Marianne Mikko.
Mikko believes that:
The blogosphere has so far been a place for good and relatively honest purposes. But when blogs become trivial, people with weaker principles also want to use them. [Bloggers] are in a position where they can substantially contaminate cyberspace. We already have to much spam, desinformation and evil intents in cyberspace.
Contaminate!
Well this is pissing me off so much that I can't really write what I think of it, as I guess it might result in the EU taking retroactive legal action against me.
We can still stop this horrible aggression against free speech, even though the EP Cultural Comittee has already accepted her initial draft, with the innocent sounding name "editorial independence and media pluralism".
This has become a major news item here in Sweden due to the efforts of bloggers, and all our EP's who have been asked about this have promised to vote against it (even though all but one of our soc dems have as of yet refused to comment on the issue, which is rather worrying as Mikko is a party friend of theirs).
On the other hand, the rest of the European media is completely silent on this issue. The rest of Europe must be made aware of this threat against our freedom so we can act against it.
But we must hurry! Mail your MEP's (especially the Socialist ones) and ask how they will vote on this issue, what you think of this, and how it will affect your voting in the next EP election.
Sending a few mails is a very easy thing to do, compared to the struggles our forefathers had to fight to achieve the freedoms this MEP is trying to take away.
Send some e-mails. I just did.
...
And yes... Considering all this it should not come as a surprise that Mikko holds a Soviet degree in journalism, which she recieved in... 1984. No, I'm not kidding.
PS. According to a mail sent from Swedish liberal-conservative MEP Charlotte Cederschiöld, the real reason behind this resolution is to protect traditional media from competition. This is highly interesting as Mikko has claimed there are completely different motives behind her scheme...