EMFA and Its Uphill Battle for Media Freedom and Democracy in the EU

It's so interesting & rare an example discussed here: States actually being regulated & bound by something.

The article isn't exactly hopeful, but it acknowledges that there are tools available & being developed to push back against illiberal state control of the media, there are tools to promote pro-democratic values. And that's, like, so far, across most of the world, been purely conditional & opt-in. Any nation could change it's attitude & disposition whenever. It can make whatever rules it wants.

This is why the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace exists: because cyberspace was a place of information & sharing, a place where states didn't have say & couldn't cut off at the knees any voice they didn't like, after an election or two or out of whack "checks and balances" got out of hand. Nations have to keep regulating themselves reasonably, have to stay on a narrow course & not fall off, or freedom is lost. But the internet is a great unplace, a place across all places, that is superior & less imposed.

Whether the future turns the Internet being a Lowest Common Denominator of possibilities & ideas, or whether it remains a refuge for Jasmine Revolution style free thinking/collaborating (Tunisia, &al) is one of the biggest new questions. For decades there has been an great freedom online to talk, to think, as an unplace where sites can pick jurisdictions, but the new overarching overwhelming trend is for nations to claim rights over anything that happens anywhere on the internet: if their citizens are involved, they make the rules, even if those citizens are on sites thousands of miles away.

The topic here almost never comes up. Nothing bounds most nations. These nations say they have sovereign power to do what they please, how they please, with the lawmaking & systems they please. So far, there is almost nothing in the world to challenge or restrict that, no recognized outside force that keeps nations recognizing their obligations: a couple court decisions & rights we thought we had were gone. I want to see more of this. I want to see more nations that actually have to answer for what they do. I don't think the system of asking for internal balance is sustainable over time; things grow out of whack. We need systems that keep each other accountable & honest, means to insure rights that transcend the vagaries of whatever makes up the State today. This is an incredibly prescient article, about one of the biggest issues of our times.

“The European Media Freedom Act, primarily designed to safeguard the EU media market, can also serve as an important tool in preserving the rule of law in member states such as Hungary and Poland, that have experienced an alarming assault on media freedom and pluralism in the past decade.”