In his continued fight against child pornography on the Internet, Sen. John McCain has introduced a new proposal in the U.S. Senate which would require commercial Web sites and individual blogs to report illegal images or videos posted by users, and delete user profiles created by sex offenders. The penalty for failing to do so would be a fine of up to $300,000 per infraction.

Setting aside the amount of the fine, which is completely outrageous, this legislation would turn back the clock on the Web five years. Community is the cornerstone of the new Web, and blogging is the foundation of the new online community. The end result of this legislation would be for most bloggers to no longer allow open comments on his/her blog, it would make the Web back into a one-way street.

The restrictions this legislation would put on the individual blogger, or even the smallest of e-commerce sites would be untenable. There's no way people who manage a blog or business part-time would have the time to police the comments on their sites, let alone do background checks on everyone who has posted a profile to see if they are registered sex offenders. I'm not even sure how a person would go about determining the true identity of anyone, let alone a sex offender, who posts a profile on a social-networking site.

The legislation is so problematic that I don't believe it has a chance to become law in its current iteration, but the trend away from free speech is alarming nonetheless. — Brian Ward

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