Censorship flamewar

http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/01/censorship-flamewar.html

by johns • 16 years ago

46 51 16 years ago

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

This essay is a weird conflation of two issues: copyright and government censorship. Yes, I suppose they're both "enemies" of the free flow of information, but I think it's an unfair comparison.

There's nothing special about the Internet from the perspective of copyright. I don't really understand why so many people have such a problem with the concept of copyright, but it seems especially acute with regard to the web crowd. I suspect it's because the ease with which copyright can be violated online makes people feel that it can hardly be doing any damage, so what's the big deal. The ironic thing is that people on HN cry bloody murder when someone rips off a webpage design or posts blogspam instead of linking to the original source. Please explain how this is different?

absconditus3• 16 years ago

I think you are missing the point. Why is copyright a valid protection? Why aren't those reasons valid outside of the case of copyright?

emmett2• 16 years ago

It's not a conflation at all. You really should have a reason why Disney movies should be censored from the internet, but Chinese dissident materials should not be. Clearly there could be such a reason, but there is a parallel.

Obviously there's nothing special about the internet from the perspective of copyright; but there's nothing special about the internet from the perspective of Chinese government censorship either. So once again, the two are parallel.

If you want to distinguish between them, come up with a reason why they're not parallel.

Nwallins2• 16 years ago

They are not parallel because most countries respect copyright. Enforcing copyright is not censorship in those countries. Putting (unexpired) copyrighted material on the public internet violates copyright. Ensuring that this does not happen is not censorship as commonly understood.

Censorship by government presumably violates its citizens' right to free speech. If this is not the case, then this is not censorship as commonly understood.

lolcraft• 16 years ago

mrkurt• 16 years ago

I doubt many people have a problem with the concept of copyright. There are a huge number, though, who have a problem with the implementation of copyright, especially when they're well aware of its original intent. (See: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....)

iamwil• 16 years ago

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/policy/2002/08/15/lessig.htm... http://wiki.lessig.org/index.php/Against_perpetual_copyright

I'd recommend reading Lessig's stuff, if you'd want to find out more. I've listened to his lectures and read his stuff, but not well enough to give an argument here on his behalf.

mercurio• 16 years ago

Copyrights are monopoly rights that the state assigns to individuals for the public good. The public good here is not just creation of works (both original and derivative) but also their consumption. Copyright law has always been concerned with finding a healthy balance between the two. This is why fair use is protected and also why copyrights are required to expire.

Now the reason the internet is such a big deal when it comes to copyright, is that it makes distribution, and hence consumption, much much easier than in the past. In fact, it also makes creating derivative works a whole lot easier. So there is a strong argument to be made that the good gained by weakening copyright laws would outweigh any harm. In fact, this is the argument Google is making with their book scanning project and related settlement.

The fundamental issue is that because the model of the world on which our current copyright laws were based has changed so radically, we should consider rewriting the laws to obtain a better copyright balance.

ryanwaggoner3• 16 years ago

Can you elaborate on this? I don't see the logical progression at all.

blasdel2• 16 years ago

when someone rips off a webpage design or posts blogspam instead of linking to the original source. Please explain how this is different?

Sure it's copyright infringement, but the sin we're crying bloody murder about is PLAGIARISM

It's the whole point of the BSD license: you can't pass off this source code as yours. In the original license with the advertising clause that applied to object code as well.

ryanwaggoner3• 16 years ago

At the core, what's the difference, really?

And it's interesting you bring up the BSD license, as a license is enabled by copyright.

mnemonicsloth• 16 years ago

Tell it to the Tank Man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

This is a Godwin's Law-type situation. Economic growth and improving standards of living are all very well, but at root China still maintains a brutal and repressive apparatus for controlling its population.

Using that fact to make a point about copyright seems shallow, even if it is an intellectually interesting argument.

axiom2• 16 years ago

The difference between the first example and the second is the difference between the defensive use of force and the initiation of force.

Disney has a monopoly on the use of Mickey Mouse because they created it and because the spent billions building the brand. That brand is their property, just like a house or a car might be.

The Chinese government arbitrarily declares ownership of other people's minds, and insists they have the right to determine what kinds of thoughts they should be allowed to have.

It's the difference between me shooting a burglar who breaks into my house, versus me walking into someone elses house and shooting them. Yeah both involve violence, but it's not hard to see why one is wrong, while the other is at least understandable.

bOR_• 16 years ago

I think the Chinese government only arbitrarily declares that as they own the internet connections in their country, they can decide what information is allowed to flow through them, and they decide such which is in their best interest.

That's still a tad short from declaring ownership of other people's minds.

Sidetracking: Say you are Bose, and use commercials and tech-speak extensively to convince people that your speakers sound heavenly. Is that trying to control people's minds? Brand building, especially when it is more than just making people aware of your product, is a form of mind control.

chrisb• 16 years ago

But I can ignore the Bose advert and choose to look at any other manufacturer of audio equipment. The Chinese government claims the right to make that choice for the people. Very effective mind control.

axiom2• 16 years ago

Yeah but what gives the Chinese government the right to control the internet connections in the country?

Even if it happens to be the case that all of the infrastructure was built with government funds - those funds were taxed away from citizens.

But that's a moot point - the Chinese government is not shy about declaring that they are trying to be a moral police. Their intent is pretty explicitly to control what information people are allowed to see.

Now, suppose a private company like AOL decided to filter their customers' internet connections - is that censorship? Absolutely not. Because you can switch to a different provider. If you're a Chinese citizen you can't switch governments (or avoid being arrested for disallowed speech.) Only the government has a monopoly on the use of force.

qjz• 16 years ago

Does Disney really have a monopoly on Mickey Mouse? Then explain this (NSFW) South Park clip: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/221275.

We make distinctions between copyright, physical property, and even personal safety. Analogies that attempt to blur the lines don't seem very helpful. Couldn't one say that Disney "arbitrarily declares ownership of other people's minds" in expecting protection because they "spent billions building the brand"?

secret• 16 years ago

Parody/satire is an exception to the rule.

absconditus3• 16 years ago

I think several of you are missing the point of Mr. Buchheit's writing. If we remove some information from the Internet because of reasons A and B, why isn't it valid for another entity to remove information for reasons A, B and even reason C which is potentially more important?

absconditus3• 16 years ago

I also want to point out that he states in the very first sentences that he does not agree with this position.

axod• 16 years ago

Because it matters 'what' it is :/ Just like freedom of speech has several caveats to it. You can't say anything you like, there are exceptions.

lmkg• 16 years ago

There is a very vital distinction: Disney removes all other copies, but allows access to the original. China removes all copies. Disney restricts how you can access the information, but China restricts what you can access.

Granted, the distinction isn't completely binary, as you can restrict access to modes that are difficult. But I still think that the distinction is productive. Disney's restriction does still fundamentally allow access to the material, while China does not.

zmimon• 16 years ago

> Disney removes all other copies, but allows access to the original.

But they don't have to - they could banish Mickey from the world if they chose to. Copyright allows them to do it. Is that wrong?

I think it's more about who created the information - copyright is about controlling things you yourself create. Censorship is about controlling access to things other people created.

byrneseyeview• 16 years ago

Disney has a reason to protect their copyrights. China has a reason to censor their Internet use. Can't you see the obvious parallels?

This is not even Godwin.

garret• 16 years ago

Not everyone realizes copyright enforcement is a form of censorship.

coffeemug• 16 years ago

I find that inhabitants of first world countries lack a certain degree of perspective. There are laws to societal development, not unlike the laws of physics. Some things must happen in a certain order; skipping steps results in catastrophes. It's easy to argue unequivocally against censorship if you've lived in the U.S. your entire life. If this is your stance, I challenge you to visit India and see the massive scale of poverty, lack of basic infrastructure and education first hand. I mean, it's really not like here over there. You have got to see it to understand. It won't be so easy to trivialize these issues after that.

diego_moita• 16 years ago

I live in a 3rd World country also with massive poverty (Brazil) and I don't know what you're talking about.

The only "law to societal development" that I know is that citizens should be free to do whatever doesn't harm other people. And opinions don't count as "harm".

I think China would be a much better place to live if their political institutions where more like the ones in your country. India is an example for China to follow.

pvg2• 16 years ago

If you define 'Censorship' more broadly than any standard definition (dictionary, Wikipedia, common sense), you easily have a wonderful starting point for a flame war.

Removing information from the internet is not, in itself, 'censorship', it's removing information from the internet. Some narrower, specific versions of it are, indeed, censorship.

Disney, incidentally, would be very happy to let you distribute their intellectual property on the internet. As long as you can meet their price. Try that with the Chinese government.

algorias• 16 years ago

Disney is preventing you from publishing something they own.

China is preventing you from publishing something you own.

There's really nothing more to it. This is just a silly attempt to attack copyright by comparing it to something that is orders of magnitude worse. I mean seriously, how can you compare the (allegedly) unfair protection of IP to what basically amounts to human rights violations?

andylei• 16 years ago

The difference is that Disney functions in a market environment, where the CCP functions as a governing body.

In a market environment we give exclusive control of intellectual property to certain parties because we want them to develop that intellectual property. If we didn't give Disney exclusive control over Some Random Princess (TM), then they will be less incentivized to develop the Next Random Princess, since their expected profits from creating Next Random Princess is much lower when anyone can make a movie about Next Random Princess. However, we like having movies with interesting characters, and we would like companies like Disney (as well as many other companies) to create interesting characters for our enjoyment. So we increase the profit motive for them by giving them exclusive control. We believe that the creation of new intellectual property outweighs the value of having free access to existing intellectual property.

With a government body, incentivization doesn't really make any sense, since there aren't competing governing organizations. Instead, we want our governments to be as open as possible, because we can only have one government, so we want to be able to criticize and influence the way it works. Note that while revolutions may be a solution to this problem, they are often bloody, and an open, flexible government is a far better solution.

ambition2• 16 years ago

An attack from first principles:

Among the various kinds of power, force is special, because force is the only power that involves active harm. As political scientists see things, the fundamental role of government is to maintain a monopoly on the use of force.

We distinguish liberal democracies from other governments based on how they distribute the authority to use force. Liberal democracies are systems designed to treat each citizen as equal. We treat factors that oppose this equality as bugs[1]. We build subsystems that permit transfer of this authority without the use of force.

Both democracies and other governments use force to maintain their monopoly on force. (Though democracies tend not to need to use it as much.) The difference is that democracies use this force with authority that was freely given to them.

Copyright was created in the belief that it would increase the wealth of a society. It is enforced with authority. If a majority of the population felt strongly that it wasn't working properly, there is a mechanism for changing it that does not involve the use of force. We treat factors that interfere with this mechanism, such as corporate sponsorship of politicians, as bugs.

Censorship by government is a kind of force designed to preserve the monopoly on force. Copyright is not an exercise of power, censorship is. The use of power involved in enforcing copyright isn't designed to preserve the power itself. (Disney doesn't run the police yet.) Finally, if the citizens of a liberal democracy doesn't like censorship, they can elect a new government that does away with it. Citizens under other forms of government have no such recourse.

Moral relativism gets my heckles up.

[1]: Newspapers are our bug tracker, and an unsolved problem is to figure out how to build a new bug tracker.

grellas• 16 years ago

No individual or private party can "force" anything off the internet unless that person has the force of law behind its otherwise private action.

The communist system of law is undergirded by a philosophy that assumes humankind can be reshaped and reorganized to achieve a collective goal for society that ultimately is ushered in by force. That is why freedom is lacking in such societies. One can be completely cynical about this and point to the way such societies have historically degenerated into slave camps but there is actually a form of "idealism" at work here, to wit, a view of humanity that says we can be molded from scratch to conform to a model of state government that enforces state ownership, state education, and state dictates as the central components of life, presumably to the betterment of society. Inexorably linked with this philosophy of the state is the idea that those who are being molded and shaped toward the ultimate goal will be exposed to and accept the ideas that animate this system and will not deviate from those ideas. A collective effort requires a collective will and there is little room for diversity of ideas when everything in society is shaped and directed by a centralized authority toward a common goal. Hence, it is natural and logical for a communist government such as that found in China to suppress all ideas that conflict with the idealized view of humanity that this government is currently forcing down the throats of its citizens. Law is law, and it is backed by fines/imprisonment/executions, etc. that enable a central governmental authority to use force to realize its will. If that centralized will is aimed at the strictest control over the most minute lives of its citizens - as it typically is in a communist system - there is no room for freedom of expression or for any beliefs or ideas that deviate from the narrow range of ideas that are deemed acceptable by those controlling the instruments of force in such a society.

In contrast, the western system of government, which generally is based on the ideas of capitalism and freedom, tends to be animated by a philosophy that sees citizens as being free to follow their diverse pursuits, goals, and dreams. This system is not anarchistic - government plays a crucial role here. But it is a role where the force of law is used to set up an infrastructure of private property and private rights where human freedom can flourish (in the ideal case, it being the case that no such system has yet been implemented without even flagrant flaws in it). Law, and the force it involves, is essential to such a system. If I have an exclusive right to own and occupy my home, this means that I have the right to exclude you from it - and, if you try to trespass, or to break and enter with the intent to steal, I can invoke the force of law to sue you in a private legal action that ultimately is backed by a sheriff ready, willing, and able to enforce collection of money judgments and also by police officers who will arrest you, courts that will try you, and jailers who will incarcerate you for your transgression. Force, or the threat of force, is behind any such system and, without this, the system could not work. Yet that force is limited by the philosophy that underlies our system - to wit, that the best government is not one that can use unlimited force without restraint on its actions but rather one that is checked, balanced, and restricted by things such constitutions that set the ultimate rules and that bind and limit all governing authorities. Without this philosophy, these constitutions would be the mere pieces of paper that they amount to in communist systems. With them, the shared values of society are realized, the governmental systems are checked while still enforcing an infrastructure that supports freedom, and we realize the fruits of enjoying a comparatively free flow of ideas, beliefs, and other information, along with all the other freedoms that we take for granted.

The Disney example is one of the force of law being used to enforce private property rights - in this case, the exclusive rights Disney may have to its intellectual properties. Though IP is intangible, and constitutes what might often be called information, it is nonetheless a form of private property that is under the exclusive ownership and control of whoever owns it. And, as with other forms of private property, the law stands behind it ready to apply force to protect the rights society may value in such forms of private property. Though enforcement of such rights is by force of law, and though (at this level) our system has a shared trait with a communist system that also uses the force of law to enforce its dictates, this system of private property has nothing fundamental in common with that of a communist system - indeed, it is the very antithesis of such a system. The one promotes and protects the individual and private parties as ends in themselves by using an organized system of government designed precisely for that purpose. The other (ideally) promotes and protects the interests of individuals and private parties by using an organized system of government whose goal is to enforce mass conformity to the declared purpose of the state to reshape humanity based on a collective means of ownership.

Of course, one can take issue with whether IP constitutes a legitimate form of private property that should be backed by the force of law. The various aspects of that debate can and should be argued by the citizens of a free society. But it is not legitimate to suggest that IP takes on a bad odor simply because it shares a superficial and incidental element (that the force of law ultimately restricts an otherwise unrestricted free flow of information) with a communist system of government. A government can censor and suppress ideas in ways that stop all free debate and that ultimately can transform a free society into a tyrannical one. That is what China does. A government does not "censor" ideas and information by declaring that a private individual or entity has an exclusive right to exploit the IP it has created, even though this has the incidental effect of limiting who can use that IP as long as it remains owned by that party.

Thus, the two cases could not be more different, and the word "censor" hardly makes them identical or even similar in any material respect.

pvg2• 16 years ago

I think this is a bit too broad, you can easily argue that just about any society includes collective goals in its purpose and that the use of force and coercion are the ultimate methods of enforcement in any system of laws.

The difference tends to be in how fairly and universally the laws are applied, rather than some fundamental quality of the legal systems themselves. If you look at the constitutions of most Communist countries, you'll find they proudly guarantee freedoms the great majority of their citizens never actually had.

mscantland2• 16 years ago

Elegant, and one seems to follow from the other. The only problem is that the analogy is wrong.

Copyright seeks to improve customer choices by creating profit incentives. Those who are willing to invest can create, and those who are willing to buy, vote with their wallets. One hand washes the other, and copyright law simply maintains the proper incentives for the system to work.

Censorship in China seeks to maintain a central focus of power by suppressing alternative ideas or organizations, which when shown the light of day might be more popular. There is an inherent conflict of interest which leads to depriving citizens of the ability to control how they are governed.

So whereas copyright preserves profit incentives but leaves the market to decide the winner, censorship in China puts one product on the table (CPC/PLA), and prevents others from being considered.

jpwagner• 16 years ago

I don't understand your point(s) at all.

  "...copyright law simply maintains the proper incentives for the system to work."

What? The whole question is whether the system works, you can't just assert that it does.

I cannot get any more out of your post than "I think copyright is good, and China is bad."

mscantland2• 16 years ago

Disney made money from proprietary content last quarter (they paid $0.35/share dividend), and censorship helped the Chinese Communist government remain in power. So the system "works" in the sense that it performs as designed. I don't think I asserted anything that isn't obvious, and that wasn't Bucheit's point.

The question Bucheit raises is whether copyright protection is bad because censorship is bad? Which isn't fair because the ends are always more important than the means when human rights are at stake.

For example, if Bucheit wanted to show copyright protection in a different light, perhaps he could have shown its virtue by comparing it to keeping secrets about underground railroad stations?

But showing counter-examples is merely proving Godwin's law. Which I think is what Bucheit's analogy showed to begin with.

three14• 16 years ago

Several comments argue that democracy makes all the difference. Why?

Theoretically, the copyright law can be changed to limit it to 20 years. In practice, it can't, despite the fact that more or less everyone who understands the issue and isn't either a lawyer or Disney employee agrees that it should be limited.

In some respects, the U.S. is a real democracy. On this particular issue, voters have no say, because they can't vote directly on the issue.

I support copyright, just not the version that Disney bought.

ambition2• 16 years ago

The majority of voters don't think that copyright reform is big enough issue to change a vote over.

A minority of voters (you and I included) think copyright should be changed. But we're not big enough to make the change happen. You might think this is a bug worth fixing. "can't vote directly" implies that you think more direct democracy would solve the problem, but I claim the cure would be worse than the disease. There are major unsolved problems with allowing small highly interested groups to influence policy too much, since the system can't tell whether they're (we're) right or not.

By contrast, even if censorship were a major issue on the minds of non-free citizens, they would be powerless to change it. Furthermore, censorship is an auto-immune disease: It harms the system's ability to fix itself and permits many more severe problems. Broken copyright isn't the same. (Corporate sponsorship of politicians, however, is an auto-immune disease too, and broken copyright is a symptom.)

est3• 16 years ago

The voting system selects someone best for an election game, but not quite for presidency.

notaddicted• 16 years ago

Disagree.

Such discussion are pointless with a simplistic (undefined) notion of good. When you define what "good" is, then you can have a real discussion about ethics.

Once you define your value system (any inconsistencies? I hope not) then you can compute (probably with immense difficulty) whether something is good or bad within it.

If you are a consequentialist then you would evaluate the effects of "censorship" in both cases. If you are not then you may also wish to evaluate "censorship" itself, or the government's enforcement of copyright (calling this censorship is rhetorical obfuscation, communication designed to confuse the listener.)

greyman• 16 years ago

But wait - there isn't a "peace and stability" in China, and never was under the Chinese Communist Party rule. There are under-reported violent unrests happening (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/art...), there is a large network of forced labour camps (http://www.laogai.org/), they are harvesting organs from live prisoners (http://organharvestinvestigation.net/), etc. etc. All those things affect large number of people and their families, and for those people it's impossible to live in peace and harmony.

Living first half of my life in the communists-ruled country, I'd say it's not possible to create harmony in a regime which suppress basic human rights. It's hard to explain to someone who didn't live under such conditions. It's like some kind of invisible pressure 24 hours a day, forcing you to comply with the regime, preventing you to fully express yourself or living in a peace.

est3• 16 years ago

> but governing China is difficult, and without the ability to censor the internet, they too might fail.

Chinese history is full of fail like this, either the state is over secure, it lost it ability to prosper and be creative, or it's partial secure and ultimately transforming the whole state to a slave factory beneficial for a minority power group, or it was so secure internally but after a hit by the external (nomads) the whole state fail. Or it's not secure at all, it was hit by nomads and fail.

The western world did wrong on many levels during this Google flamewar

1. Never accuse C.C.P. gov't directly & plainly, they already have dozens of counter plans ready, and they are experienced dealing with it. You have to use tactics to play with CCP gov't

2. Democracy, freedom means nothing in Chinese culture, esp. in average people's subconscious mind. Sometimes it even means some fuckedup ideology sponsored by the US Imperialism.

3. Keep the flamewar off politics and there are more chances of winning. We (Chinese) knew Google and the others will lose the battle as soon as the state.gov announcements came out. The CCP gov't has an ultimate weapon, patriotism. Any dispute can magically transformed to national security and ethnic pride by the hands of the official propaganda dept. No matter how reasonable you are, you will be overtaken by the patriotic voices inside this country overnight.

4. Use C.C.P.'s own claim to slam itself. For example, the CCP proudly declares it as a 'public servant', then why should a servant censor the master's mind? During days of the initial introductions of the Internet, many early official textbook in China declares the Internet as something without borders, with no political regulations, everyone can join and speak, but now it says it must be ruled under the Party's law and to keep the state stable.

5. The word 'censorship' sounds trivial to Chinese people, you have to use more severe and native expressions to interpret the concept. For example 'Literary Inquisition' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Inquisition, or Naming Taboo. Because the CCP propaganda actively condemn these actions, it's irony and hilarious to see itself doing the exact shit right now. Another classy example is you can't copy paste China's Constitution Law on most of Chinese forums, weblogs or message boards because the system will prompt you there's 'illegal' keyword in the content.

6. The CCP gov't always accuse the US for it's cold war mentality, esp. in the pre-WTO days, but the Party now acts exactly like its role in a Cold War. There's even a growing anti-globalization hype inside China that the state should abolish foreign stuff and make Chinese alternative completely on everything

Censorship flamewar

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