The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks earlier this week may hold unforeseen ramifications for Pensito Review. While aimed primarily at such P-to-P products as Grokster and Napster, it appears the ruling also might impact Penster, Pensito Review’s P-to-P truth-sharing network.
Penster is the backbone of Pensito Review, providing the technological means for PR’s editors and readers to “swap” truths. For eample, Trish uncovers a truth in Florida about that rascal Jeb Bush and posts it on Pensito Review. Visitors to the PR Web site can then access that truth and comment on it, thereby “swapping” their own version of the truth with their peers.
Of course, users of Penster do not pay for the truth they access, which is where Pensito Review runs afoul of the Supremes. In the current political environment created by the Bush Administration, truth has value, and that value must be tightly controlled or the truth will become devalued.
For example, the Downing Street Memo was very valuable to the administration as long as it remained a secret. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, the memo’s value has plunged precipitously, according to the administration. By allowing readers to “swap” truths using Penster, Pensito Review is contributing to the devaluation of those truths, since, according to the wingnuts in Washington, the wider truths are disseminated, the less valuable they are. Hence, the admin’s tendency to discount such truths in press briefings.
We here at Pensito Review believe that peer-to-peer truth swapping via the Penster network is protected by the First Amendment.
During the Supreme Court’s debate over the matter, constitutional expert Justice Antonin Scalia maintained that there was no express guarantee of freedom of speech in the Consitution. When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor pointed out that the First Amendment to the Constitution did guarantee freedom of speech, Scalia burst out: “Amendment? What amendment? Nobody told me there were amendments to the Consitution! Jeez!”
Truth swapping is a technological phenomenon developed as a reaction to the Bush Administration’s practice of lie-swapping.
Kinda makes you nostalgic for the Clinton era phonemenon of spit swapping.