FLASHBACK: HILLARY CLINTON SAYS INTERNET NEWS NEEDS 'RETHINK'
Sun Sep 25 2005 16:52:50 ET
China on Sunday imposed new media restrictions designed to limit the news and other information available to Internet users, sharply restricting the scope of content that can be posted on Web sites.
Hillary Rodham Clinton said IN 1998 during a meeting with reporters said that "we are all going to have to rethink how we deal with" the Internet because of the handling of White House sex scandal stories on Web sites.
Clinton was asked whether she favored curbs on the Internet, after the DRUDGE REPORT made headlines with coverage of her husband's affair with a White House intern.
"We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are all these competing values ... Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?" she said.
Hillary Clinton Continued:
"I don't have any clue about what we're going to do legally, regulatorily,
technologically -- I don't have a clue. But I do think we always have to
keep competing interests in balance. I'm a big pro-balance person. That's
why I love the founders -- checks and balances; accountable power. Anytime
an individual or an institution or an invention leaps so far out ahead of
that balance and throws a system, whatever it might be -- political,
economic, technological --out of balance, you've got a problem, because
then it can lead to the oppression people's rights, it can lead to the
manipulation of information, it can lead to all kinds of bad outcomes which
we have seen historically. So we're going to have to deal with that. And I
hope a lot of smart people are going to --"
REPORTER: Sounds like you favor regulation.
MRS. CLINTON: Bill, I don't know what -- that's why I said I don't know
what I'm in favor of. And I don't know enough to know what to be in favor
of, because I think it's one of those new issues we've got to address.
We've got to see whether our existing laws protect people's right of
privacy, protect them against defamation. And if they can, how do you do
that when you can press a button and you can't take it back. So I think we
have to tread carefully.
END
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