The Bigsibling Blog

I find this such and incredible story. It boggles the mind. Like that bill that was proposed in Mississippi that would have made it illegal for a restaurant to serve fat people, there is currently a bill before the state legislature in Arizona that would hold businesses liable for civil damage if they distribute obscene or dangerous stuff.

Bookstores, news organizations, cable companies and other businesses are strongly opposed to legislation that would make an individual or a company liable for civil damages if they produce, publish or distribute any dangerous or obscene materials that causes someone to commit an act of terrorism or a felony.

Are these guys for real? So a bookseller sells a book, and someone buys it, and they go and kill some poor schmuck, and then claim that reading the book made them do it. So the bookseller is now on the hook, civilly, for the crime? Well, I suppose it worked for the tobacco industry. People smoke, don’t like that they made poor choices, and therefore sue the tobacco company for their poor decisions.

It works for bars. If a bartender serves an already drunk person more, then he goes out and runs over some little old lady, killing her and mangling her walker, the bartender can be held liable for that. It sucks I know. But it’s just one more way to remove responsibility from the offender, to make the offender the victim. It’s not Johnny’s fault he took a rifle and shot up the mall, he just listened to Helter Skelter 500 times in the last two days. That’s why we killed all those people, it wasn’t Johnny’s fault, it was that evil, evil music.

Although…thinking about this just a little more…that would mean that booksellers could no longer sell the Koran. That can even go so far as to make so that Koran’s can’t even be given away. I wonder if that is possibly the true reason for this stupid bill? It would be interesting to see if any religious groups will express outrage or opposition to this bill.

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