Re: Italian Presidency of G8 and regulating the internet - access to information and supplements

[Guest guest]

OT, but we don't want to see this happen!Berlusconi Plans to Use G8 Presidency to "Regulate the Internet" (Truthout.org) Two words for Mr. Berlusconi: "Good luck.." The worst they will probably do is just come up with some "rating" system for (sic) "truthful content". This will 1) be ignored by those who know how to use their brains, and/or 2) just lead the sheeple to their doom (relative doom, perhaps - for some things at least). The real danger is that they will start doing what China already does with dissidents - make them disappear, or otherwise stop what they are doing. The FDA is apparently already hassling supplement companies I've heard, even if CODEX can't make it hear (easily) because of DHSEA.. Not to mentio the thousands of autism parents who might (** hypothetical here, I don't want to end up in Syria in thumb screws under the PATRIOT Act **) immediately join the NRA and rise up and do.. (oops - have to go - see black helicopters out the window..) But something to consider is is - what if they put pressure on Yahoo to censor content on their lists? ALL the autism biomed lists are on Yahoo to my knowledge. There is no possible way they could look at EVERY single post on every single list, so they'd just have to shut them down.. Very unlikely (the FDA has tried it already, and there is that pesky little thing known as the First Ammendment and Yahoo is an American company). But what if he started building a "Great Firewall of Italy"? ABMD, EOHarm, and any number of other lists I'm sure have Italian members. I haven't written the Perl script to look grep for "@.*\.it", but I'm sure there are a few. Supplements are already hard to get for some parents who don't live in the US, because either of CODEX, or local rules that are like it. Or at least the more Draconian interpretations of the 'supplement provisions' of it (so I've read), which I profess to not completely understand - CODEX regulates food, and yet supplements are no classed as food.. So CODEX should have no bearing on "dietary supplements" at all - local rules concerning "drugs" and "dietary supplements" should.)Jim