The Coming Age of Internet Censorship

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_coming_age_of_internet_censorship

by KaiP • 17 years ago

34 25 17 years ago

TomOfTTB3• 17 years ago

I don’t really think this is about the Internet.

There’s a battle being fought all over the world right now over what people can and can’t freely say. European and Middle Easter companies are on the censorship side of things. In France you can get prison time for telling a friend you don’t like Muslims.

Now I don’t agree with such prejudice but should we turn the unenlightened into criminals?

That’s the issue and it goes beyond criminalization. Recently we’ve heard a lot about the blogosphere trying to force Facebook to take down holocaust denial sites. But that opens the door because the principle is "we don’t like these people so we have the right to stop them from speaking here"

But if we in the blogosphere can censor what we don’t like why can’t the Government censor what it doesn’t like?

Yes, Facebook is a private company. But it’s a private company that has chosen not to censor these groups. When the public tries to force it to do so you’re setting a precedent that those with power (in this case the public) have the right to force those under their power to censor free speech. Which again begs the question why can’t the ultimate form of power in our modern world (the Government) use that same precedent to censor those under their power (the Citizens)?

So this isn’t about the Internet as much as it’s about a decision that affects the very fabric of society itself. The internet is just part of that society.

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

This is about the Internet because the Internet has become the only medium that hasn't been stifled. The recent protests in Iran certainly show how a technical means like twitter, leads to political results.

The point is that the technical evolution of the Internet has so-far paced the growing urge of state to impose censorship. The technical questions and political questions currently are intermingled.

Imagine the present society without the Internet - with something like Al Gore's "Information Superhighway" or France's Minitel system.

TomOfTTB3• 17 years ago

I'm not saying it doesn't involve the Internet I'm just saying it's not about the Internet primarily. The Internet is a form of communication at its core and that makes it susceptible to other laws. That in turn makes this a societal thing. To give an example: I can think of several cases where misguided judges have extended rules that governed print media to also include web sites.

To put it another way, Internet censorship is a symptom but it isn’t the cancer. If you focus on trying to fight that one symptom you’ll eventually be over run because the cancer will continue to grow stronger in the background. Censorship in general is the cancer and that is what we should all be looking to kill here.

theblackbox4• 17 years ago

I wonder if in this context we could extend the limitations of "free speech" to include something as abstract as "common sense"... go with me on this.

For instance, smoking tobacco in public places? Now I was under the impression that not a single shred of evidence existed to back up the premise that second hand smoke is dangerous to your health. BUT, I would concede to the arguments that favour "common sense"... of course being in a smokey bar for hours on end is going to have a similar effect to smoking. What I don't agree with, however, is a government that is willing to mandate _laws_ on the premise of "common sense". If you don't want to breath other peoples smoke, don't associate with smokers. If porn offends you, watch something else! If you don't like what fascist say, speak louder than they do!

Haven't even read the OP yet, I just felt compelled to reply. You've hit the nail on the head.

[EDIT: read it! yep - nail, head, hit]

_cbsz• 17 years ago

>Now I was under the impression that not a single shred of evidence existed to back up the premise that second hand smoke is dangerous to your health.

Just plain wrong. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS

Ardit204• 17 years ago

Society has always been able to censor its members through culture and pressure to conform, yet this allows one freedom to diverge on say political issues or art form, although this may not be entirely true.

My point is that in the case of Facebook it is the common decency of people which have decided to protest on some action by Facebook. Although these people may have influence and may pressure the Facebook to act as they want it to, the decision still lays with facebook.

Government however has a vast machine which ensures that its laws and policies are obeyed. For this fact alone nothing can be compared with the government and everything should be done to ensure that their hand remains at the absolute minimum because some old bureaucrats do not really know how a twenty year old teenager may achieve the "good life". To the old bureaucrat it may mean marrying a woman, perhaps a white woman, or a Chinese woman. To the old bureaucrat it may mean that prodigy is a bad influence on youngsters, etcetera. In short, it is none of his business and what is his business our society has been deciding since it became a collective and it could not be simpler, if it harms anyone, or anyone's property, then sure regulate their behaviour, otherwise leave society to deal with pressuring into confirmation when it comes to such issues as common human decency to have respect and empathy for the tragedy of an entire people.

TomOfTTB3• 17 years ago

"My point is that in the case of Facebook it is the common decency of people which have decided to protest on some action by Facebook. Although these people may have influence and may pressure the Facebook to act as they want it to, the decision still lays with facebook."

I'm sorry but this simply isn't true. It's like me holding a gun on you and telling you to do something or I'll shoot. If I then turned around and claim the choice was still yours I'd be lying. Same here. People are threatening Facebook with pain (albeit financial) if they don’t comply.

Also remember that, at its core, Government IS society. What if people voted in representatives that made a law forcing Facebook to squash these groups? That blows your argument completely out of the water because suddenly the government is acting at the people’s behest to censor

Again, this is how good people get on the wrong side of this issue. They think what they dislike is ok to censor while being against what people they disagree with want to censor. But once the policy is set that it’s ok to censor that which you don’t like everyone gets into the game and we have a society without free speech.

P.S. On the "society has always done this" argument you're right but that doesn't mean society was correct in doing it. I don't like communists but I also don't approve of Hollywood coming up with a black list and robbing people of their livelihood for their beliefs. That wasn’t government it was just people and it was wrong. To go back further Socrates was killed in a sham trial for questioning what he felt was the moral decline of his society.

The bottom line is there's no need for censorship. If a school of thought is reprehensible than you should teach your children that and have your friends teach their children that and if society is really against the reprehensible thought it will be discredited. Holocaust denial isn't almost universally discredited because people were censored it's universally discredited because we make a point of presenting the facts to our children in history classes around the country.

theblackbox4• 17 years ago

"Society has always been able to censor its members through culture and pressure to conform"

It's statements like this that I think show how grossly misunderstood this whole debate is. Society? how so? modern society? the global village? Always!? Impossible. There is widespread belief that the human mind is pre-configured to attend to only a certain amount of individuals, and thus anthropologist believe that their was an upper limit on the size of human settlements for much of human evolution. There are still some tribes and groups that behave in such a way that I think shed's light on this issue. There are a group of Amish in USA that form communities no bigger than 124ish individuals (about the limit that psychologists believe we are capable of interacting with and knowing on the level we evolved to commune at). When the community exceeds this threshold, the population split and one group settle another village about a days travel away. I'd be willing to speculate that this type of communal migration is what burst the human population from it's African homelands. Each time a community became to big to handle, whereby I think I mean the potential for dissent crosses a threshold, it was better for the community to split than for this dissent to fester. This type of behavior can also be seen in some of the great apes.

I would argue then, that Society has not ALWAYS had the ability to censor it's citizens, but that the myriad communities of humanity have aggregated into a whole much more massive than can be sustainable with the old paradigm of being able to leave and settle a new community. This is no longer possible, and only seems so through the creation of new mediums to populate with those few dissenting pioneers.

Confusion3• 17 years ago

In France you can get prison time for telling a friend you don’t like Muslims.

Citation needed.

(in other words: don't repeat this kind of crap. If you think it is ridiculous, then it probably is so ridiculous that it isn't true. Like in this case.)

Ardit204• 17 years ago

Well, I do not know if it is true, but saying you do not like Muslims is no different than saying you do not like Jews or blacks as it is making a generalisation about the entire people and probably used to scapegoat them and stereotype them and we know where that led in the 1940s.

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

"But if we in the blogosphere can censor what we don’t like why can’t the Government censor what it doesn’t like?"

Uh, try the first amendment?

sp332• 17 years ago

But if we in the blogosphere can censor what we don’t like why can’t the Government censor what it doesn’t like?

"Free speech is a principle imposing restrictions at the legislative level in order to create permissive space at the individual level." -Julian Sanchez (over at Ars Technica)

thisrod• 17 years ago

the censorship in Great Britain of the Wikipedia page for Virgin Killer, an album by the German hard rock group, Scorpions.

Some of you might be too young to remember Scorpion. They had a worldwide hit in the late '80s, with a song that went, "I strolled along the Thames, passing by Big Ben, listening to the winds of change." Or something like that.

cousin_it• 17 years ago

Uh, the Moskva river and Gorky park.

nazgulnarsil2• 17 years ago

Censorship is rarely about a specific message. It's about people becoming accustomed to the alien idea that a third party MUST be present to intermediate communication between you and anyone else on the grounds of some nebulous externality (think of the children). I felt this was the most important bit of 1984, often glossed over for the more shocking bits. Doublespeak was a way to censor even face to face communication without any enforcement mechanism needing to be in place besides social pressure.

The Coming Age of Internet Censorship

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