Creeping internet censorship

Every time a new form of communication is invented, those in power practically fall over themselves in a rush to control it. The British government once required a license to own a printing press; in the United States the Federal Communications Commission was created to monitor and regulate the new industries of radio and television; and Hollywood was forced to adopt the restrictive Hays Code to avoid government censorship. In each case, the reasons given were distressingly the same; protection of "public morality" or "national security," or the "need" to prevent false information from being spread (as usual, the government doesn't like the competition).

The internet presented a new challenge to those who would tell us what we can see and hear for our own good. It's decentralized, with no bulky presses, projectors or transmitters that can be monitored or licensed. There's literally millions of websites, and even totalitarian regimes like China's have faced challenges in censoring them. Rest assured, though, that those in power aren't going to give up easily. In the U.S., the government has attempted to regulate the internet in the name of fighting child pornography. Congress's first attempt, the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, was struck down by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutionally restrictive. Thwarted in their efforts at direct control, the government adopted a more subversive approach: pressuring internet service providers (ISPs) to censor their own customers, a method lifted directly from the People's Republic of China playbook. The Constitution protects us from government censorship; it doesn't protect us from corporate censorship. Clever, huh?

Now I'm not in favor of child porn. Who is? But child porn is just an excuse to get the camel's nose under the tent. Verizon Communications has just announced that it's eliminating thousands of discussion groups from its servers, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with child porn, as a result of pressure from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Coumo is quite proud of his end run around the Constitution:

"We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry."

There's a quote that's been erroniously attributed to Mussolini, but it perfectly sums up this new joint government/corporate effort to dictate what gets discussed in our society:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

As the Verizon case indicates, nothing could be worse for the preservation our civil liberties than a coalition of power-seeking politicians and profit-seeking corporations. What's a freedom-seeking American to do?