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Bob Barr on Internet and Media

We live in what has been termed the Information Age. Every day, most Americans interact with or absorb some form of mass communications media -- television, radio, print, or the internet. The owners of these outlets, and the digital pipes and airwaves through which they are delivered into our homes, have a significant impact on the values, lifestyles, and points of view the American people are exposed to. And because information is easily shared and accessed, issues of privacy and information ownership will continue to demand our attention. This topic includes information about candidate positions on: media consolidation, net neutrality, telecom immunity, intellectual property, rural broadband and the digital divide, censorship, internet taxes, and media literacy.

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The issues

  NewBob Barr strongly opposes rules limiting the number of media outlets (newspapers, TV or radio stations, etc.) a single corporation can own within individual media markets.

From the 2008 Libertarian Party Platform: "We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation or control of communications media and technology."

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  NewBob Barr strongly opposes the principle of equal access to internet bandwidth known as “network neutrality.”

"The one thing more than anything else that we need to guard against is government intrusion into and regulation of the internet…. As you know that government control can be very insidious. It can come directly. It can come through manipulation and favors to telecommunications companies, for example. It can come through taxation. There are a lot of ways they can do it, but we need to be very careful not to let that happen."

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  NewBob Barr strongly opposes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies who cooperated in warrantless, government-ordered surveillance of Americans.

“The [FISA Amendments Act of 2008] grants the government unprecedented power to surreptitiously spy on the phone calls and emails of American citizens in our own country, so long as the government claims to believe that they are communicating with someone not in the U.S. [The measure] also grants immunity to telephone companies which aided the government’s law-breaking.  So much for the rule of law."

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  NewBob Barr is neutral on current restrictions on the exchange of intellectual property and copyrighted material in the digital realm.

From the Barr campaign's response to Glassbooth’s questionnaire: "Bob Barr is in favor of loosening restrictions on the exchange of intellectual property, but not opposed to the general idea of intellectual property rights."