Slashdot Mirror

Then the author of that video failed to adhere to industry-standard set dressing practices. See Ringgold v. BET, 126 F.3d 70 (2d Cir. 1997).

as yes there actually ARE some things, like child porn, that SHOULD be censored, according to ANY ideology

Right! Life is never more complicated than an ultimatum!

yet you see people all the time, especially on slashdot, actually saying "country A censors child porn so how can it criticize another country for censoring political opinion?

Really? ALL the time? ESPECIALLY on slashdot? Lets see two examples. Not half-assed examples that might kinda sorta mean what you say if you looked at them from the most biased perspective, nor examples of people trolling, I want full-ass examples. Gotta be pretty easy to come up with since they happen ALL the time, ESPECIALLY here. Right?

Firstly, I didn't mention censorship, you've done that by yourself. Having said that, it's not too much a reach to describe discrimination as a form of censorship, is it?

But, hey, if you're willing to tolerate discrimination in your "perfect" US society that "gets" freedom of speech, well, good for you, buddy.

Secondly, if, six years on from September 11th, you need me to point out clear examples of how political debate and dissent was stifled in the aftermath of those attacks then you're practically a lost cause.

But if you truly want examples, here's the first link I found from a quick Google search: http://www.ncac.org/issues/freeex911.cfm.

I hope you learn something beyond what "figuratively" means from this exercise.

Who said i was democrat? I don't for one minute believe Dick Armitage "leaked" the information by accident. He's an ex seal operative. I'd say need to know would be pretty much ingrained in him, especially working at that level of government. With regards to WMD the majority of intelligence services got it wrong. That is true. And even then that is only because that is the official line given under government pressure. There is plenty of evidence to show that there was plenty of dissent within the intelligence community regarding the WMD issue. The difference though is that only the US and UK (of the big players) were pressing for war on this basis. With regards to censorship; The US government has been cesoring stuff left right and center. i suggest you take a look at http://www.ncac.org/issues/freeex911.cfm

Mind, it's not nearly as novel as you'd like to think. In fact, many of us are already very familiar with what you describe: getting recommendations from people whose opinion we respect. It's always been the basis of criticism, and many of us also do it on a small scale with family, friends, and colleagues, not to mention "querying the whole world" through IMDb, Netflix, and message boards the world over. (Notably, what we're getting from those sources isn't merely numerical matches to our taste; we're getting human speech, human thought, human responses, as well as interaction.)

But is helping to digitize the process of taste match-making the same thing as "bring(ing) our fragmented society closer together"? Would we casually make such exagerrated claims about selecting media? About taste?

You would. Not I. Society is fragmented not by our taste in what we choose to read, watch, or hear but instead by real issues, real problems. Fragmentation of taste, in fact, is pretty damn normal and desirable. It's what pluralism's all about. There's no good reason to want everyone to like the same thing; there are plenty of nasty ones, though.

Call me cynical if you like; fair enough. For my part, you strike me as a tad starry-eyed, as in:

How incredible, I thought, to have the ability to KNOW, before I ever buy a book, before I even go to the store, that I'm going to like it!

My dear Recommender, allow me to recommend a film to you.

Annie on My Mind (#48 on the ALA list) was burned outside of the Kansas City School District headquarters in 1993.

Other links

...since they have a habit of censoring just about everything under the sun.

The C stands for Censorship. After all of this, what's left to justify broadband? :)

In the U.S., I think that the government should fund Free Software development for projects that the Government is likeyly to use or desires for specific projects. I also believe that the government should not fund the development of closed source projects that are destined to be products for private vendors, as that would be using public funds to enrich private individuals and of course would end up rife with corruption. Perhaps using the BSD license for government funded projects would be "politically correct" enough in the Republican sense as it would not preclude thier supporters from turning the project results into a money making venture if they had the desire, technology, and business sense to do so.

I would not like to see the U.S. government begin funding programming in a more general way, because there is the possibility of uUniversities and Free Software development labs/projects becoming dependant on govt. money and the politicisation of Free Software when a govt. funded project is released that has the potential to be used in ways that some people do not approve of. A group of network security and monitoring tools could be misconscrued as "tools for hackers", or an HTTP server condemned as for "the distribution of pornography". To many, this may seem far fetched, but those who are familiar with the art world know how mixing public funding for museums and public exhibition venues was turned into a Republican "bully pulpit issue" in the controversy over the display of artwork most notably Piss Christ by Andres Serrano and some photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe. The works in question were not specifically created using government funds, but the issues arose when facilities that were partially funded by government grants decided to display the artwork. As it is now, he volunteer nature of much Free Software development prevents many of the political issues that could arise, and it also ensures that political decision making has little or no direct influence on what is developed or how.

I must admit that I do find it disturbing to know that the U.S. government is funding "computer science" education programs that amount to little more than training facilities where people learn to program for a specific and propietary platform, but I'm not sure there is an acceptable policy that could prevent this.

Bah .. sorry for the double posting, but here's some new information to make up for it. This information is more current than what PeaceFire has. It basically undermines your argument, but on the other hand, it doesn't contain anything to support my claims. Oh well.

"It is not true, for example, that "more than 3500 research studies have examined the association between media violence and violent behavior [and] all but 18 have shown a positive relationship." The source you cite for this assertion, ex-Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman's Teaching Our Kids to Kill, is not a scholarly work, nor does your Statement even transcribe Grossman's claims accurately. In fact, there are probably fewer than 300 empirical studies that try to measure the effects of violent media - with uneven and ambiguous results.

"Even more troubling than the AAP's factual inaccuracies are its overall distortions and its failure to acknowledge many serious questions about the interpretation of media violence studies. For example, correlations between aggressive behavior and preference for violent entertainment do not demonstrate that one causes the other. Laboratory experiments that are designed to test causation rely on substitutes for aggression, some quite far-fetched. Punching Bobo dolls, pushing buzzers, and recognizing "aggressive words" on a computer screen are all a far cry from real-world aggression.

"Some studies have found increased aggressive behavior among children after watching nonviolent programs such as "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." Others have found "null" effects. Many studies that claim "positive" findings actually consisted of multiple subtests with divergent and ambiguous results. The researchers then manipulated the data, subdividing the categories of subjects in various ways until they found at least one "statistically significant" result."

Quoted from http://www.ncac.org/issues/aapviolenceltr.html

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has an excellent paper which details exactly what "harmful to minors" means.