Thursday, August 2 12:01 AM EST

New Law Protects Free Speech

Washington DC - The Free Speech Protection Act [FSPA] ensures free speech by encrypting the first amendment and only allowing properly licensed corporations and individuals to use it.  Funding to develop the encryption is being generated by auctions of these free speech licenses. Use of free speech without a license would be punishable by heavy fines and 5-10 years in federal prison.

"Every American wants and deserves free speech.  It's a competitive advantage for the USA.  We don't want countries like China to get a hold of our first amendment," said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi.  "That's why we've entrusted protecting our free speech to cutting edge technology companies like Microsoft and Adobe."  The Free Speech Protection legislation was sponsored by Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska and AOL TW in the Senate and by Disney in the House of Representatives.

Senior Marketing Director of Adobe Allan Wyse said, "In combination with the DMCA [Digital Millenium Copyright Act] this accords utmost protection for free speech.  If anyone attempts to break the encryption they can be prosecuted.  If they speak freely without a license they can be prosecuted.  In the end free speech is protected for all Americans, or at least those that have purchased a free speech license."

Many Americans were outraged by the FSPA. "You mean we now have to pay for free speech?" said Darren Gilmour, "That's not exactly free, is it?"

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, explained "That's one of the biggest complaints we get about the new legislation, but Americans should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'."

In a confusing twist, the Electronic Frontier Foundation which fights to protect the free speech rights of citizens opposed the Free Speech Protection Act. "Congress wants you to believe that the FSPA protects the first amendment and it does in a way, but not in a good way. OK, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but trust us on this one. This law is unconstitutional and we're confident the Supreme Court will rule it unconstitutional."

The Supreme Court, brought to you in HDTV by Sony, will begin hearing arguments on the constitutionality of the law in October.

A quick search on Gnutella provided several cracks for the yet unreleased encryption scheme, making free speech available to anyone with an Internet connection.

More Tech News

Recommend this Story to a Friend