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Nazis on Napster
Germany bans much material of this type. Even old Nazi propaganda films cannot be shown except in strictly regulated educational contexts. For a scholarly, in-depth examination of how real propaganda can be effectively used to educate -- and a call for its deregulation -- I recommend my late friend Stig Hornshøj-Møller, writing about Der ewige Jude ("The Eternal Jew," a 1941 propaganda film created by Hitler and Goebbels).
Censorship of Nazi expression ultimately comes from a fear that it is seductive and may influence its audience. I've listened to a sampling of racist, Nazi music and it's not likely to reach a huge audience just because it's on Napster. It's the worst music I've ever heard. Even if I could ignore the lyrics, I think I'd prefer "Achy Breaky Heart" on infinite replay. For some reason, racist imbeciles don't make good musicians, go figure. A ban is entirely unnecessary: it really just draws attention to what would otherwise be overwhelmingly ignored.
And just for completeness, here's a link to the Yahoo French auction ruckus. France demanded that Yahoo make it impossible for anyone within its (France's) borders to access an auction of Nazi-themed items. (Their own report found that this would work pretty well, excepting the minor fact that anyone who wanted to could circumvent it.)
Next they will tell us what is good and what is bad.
Oh, you want to listen to an unsigned band? TOUGH! They arent signed to BMG. You cant trade it.
Thats the kind of stronghold record labels want.
Thats why they fear Napster and Mp3's.
If artists can make a $ without the label, the label goes out of business. Boo hoo.
actually, yes. I would highly recommend checking out both of these nazi bands:
backstreet boys
-or-
n sync
I believe that both bands are actually advocating nazi ideas and concepts to the young minds of america. I'd dig up the lyrics to prove it but I don't have much time...
Actually, it is censorship, in that BMG would like to stop certain types of music from being downloaded from napster, but it certainly doesn't fall under constitutional freedom of speech in the U.S. The people who run napster can do whatever they want with it. That's not to say that this whole thing isn't a stupid idea though...
Clue 1: censorship, as defined in the US, is by the government.
Clue 2: Walmart sells more music than any other business in the world, they are also highly selective in what CDs they sell, which ones the advertise for, where they place them. Try and find a Public Enemy CD in a Walmart. Try to find Sheryl Crow CDs in Walmart. This has gone on since Walmart has sold CDs, why no complaints?
I also think that the technology is there to stop it. It is stupid to not think it is possible. Now it's doubtful that napster has the talent to produce it but I'm positive it can be done. There have been virus scanners for years, for years and years they have detected polymorphic viruses and encrypting viruses. The same basic ideas apply to MP3s. You could probably produce a tool that analyzed a song, produced a "signature" for it and then could detect similar ones on other songs with a couple semesters of grad student time. Does it qualify as "easy" ? probably not but it's silly to think it's not possible and false positives don't matter so much if they are infrequent.
I don't think it is right to hide information. I think Nazis should be allowed to share their propaganda and let their stupidity be seen by the world but I also think it is entirely within their rights and I think it is ethical for a business like Napster or Walmart to protect their image and control what kinds of information they propagate. They owe it to their investors and stockholders.
after all this crap in florida we finally have a new president and you suggest to put a bullet in his brain???
Ummm....you know where the word "slave" comes from? Slav. I.e., most of the people who currently inhabit eastern Europe. Whites have been enslaved and imported from Europe to North Africa and the Middle East for thousands of years. Back maybe 30-40 years ago, a farmer in Britain was plowing a field and accidently found a long chain of slave collars from the Roman era (when slaves were one of Britain's biggest exports). It's been going on a long time. In fact, a large portion of the early population of colonial America were white slaves: not just those euphemistically called "indentured servants" but people who were kidnapped, press ganged, sold, shipped out, and then often worked to death. Try Hoffman's "They Were White And They Were Slaves" here or here. Other links are below.
Nor should you fall for the line that this was just something that whites did to other whites, or that Middle Easterners, Arabs, etc., did to whites or others. No, blacks and "asians" (whatever that means) may not have had the opportunity to enslave whites, but they have done lots of other nasty things. Of course, don't expect the media or academia to draw your attention to these un-PC facts.
http://odinslounge.techgold2000.com/
http://www.propatria.org/findex.htm
http://www.resistance.com/
http://www.whitepride.com/
http://www.panzerfaust.com/
http://www.ddc.net/ygg/
http://www.stormfront.org/
http://www.natall.com/
http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/
It IS illegal to own this kind of music/objects/... in France and Germany. What these countries are trying to do is the same than for drugs. Possession is illegal and distribution is illegal. If a columbian guy sell drugs to americans, americans will do whatever they feel necessary to stop him because they think it is harmful to their country. France and Germany do the same, if a US company try to distribute something illegal in France or Germany they will try to stop it.
As much as I am against censorship of the Internet, the sad reality in a country where democracy is not as stable as in the U.S. (true only for East Germany which lived under fascist and stalinist dictatorship from 1933 to 1990) makes me wonder whether libertarian truisms will help.
Sven
www.ihr.org
Anyone who spends an hour on this site, or a few hours reading decent articles posted on alt.revisionism, will soon learn that it is not Irving, Butz and Cole that are the Nazis, it isa the likes of Simon Wiesenthal that are.
And they are NOT denying the Holocaust(tm), they are saying three things (mainly):
Read with an open mind and you'll be surprised.
For anyone really interested in this, but Butz's book, "The Hoax of The Twentieth Century". Everything is referenced to a high degree (unlike books that dispute this, such as the ones from Lipstadt). Get the book from Loompanics.
And for what it's worth, some of the "Deniers" are even jews themselves (i.e. David Cole).
Another book of interest that was recently published (Butz's was originally printed in the 70s), is Fincklesteins one on *why* the jews promote the Holocaust(tm).
Wait... You mean Rap != Hip-Hop???
I feel so disillusioned.
--White Guy from the Suburbs
Hmm. I was unaware that Napster did any business at all in either of those countries. Just because some people happen to download their free program and download illegal material makes Napster no more liable than Microsoft would be if someone downloaded IE and pulled down some kiddie porn.
Communist propaganda isn't allowed if it tries to destroy Democracy. The German Communist Party has been forbidden in the 1960s because of that.
It was Communism that was the main anti-democratic concern between 1950 and 1990. Now it is the ultra right-winged parties since they have gained popularity espacially in Eastern Germany and with young unemployed people.
It is the very peculiar history of Germany that "forces" us to have a close view at anything related to the Third Reich. For example, it is forbidden to deny that millions of Jews (and other people) were murdered in concentration camps (this is also known as the "Auschwitz-Lie")
But on the other hand Europe is a lot more liberal in other parts, so I think it is not appropriate for US Americans to critisize these laws as long as there is death penalty and such stupid things.
SebastianIn practice, censorship was a central plank of what the Nazis did, famously fulfilling Henrich Heine's prediction that where they start by burning books, they end up burning people. If we are to properly oppose this thinking, we have to oppose censorship at every turn, even where it's turned against a justly popular target for hate: neo-Nazis themselves, who would of course institute all sorts of censorship given half a chance.
--
Xenu loves you!
They're more civilized than us in just about anything you look at: drug laws, executions, guns, welfare, pollution, etc. About the only place America is still ahead is free speech. It seems most Europeans still don't understand that free speech applies even to speech you don't like. It means even though the Nazis did horrible things, it's not worth bending on the issue of free speech.
The Germans ban Nazi stuff, the French ban cults. When are they going to learn?
I shouldn't gloat too much though, without the Supreme Court the Puritans would have taken over this country years ago.
The Bertelsmann Music Group is a Germany-based company. Under German law, Nazi propaganda is a big crime - and they take it seriously. Remember, Nazis led to 50 years of fracturation of Germany.
BMG doesn't want to get problems under their home law, especially now that they're an interested 3rd party on what's happening in Napster. But Napster is a US company, so they're not obligated to follow the German law!
Maybe we NEED an modus vivendi between US and Euro laws...
And yes, we shall never forget the millions of Jews, gitanos, homosexuals or even plain oppositors of the Nazi tyranny.
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
But between this and the Yahoo/France thing, we've got several cases that are testing how well national boundaries can extend into the internet (we all know they can't, but that's besides the point).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
For more info see the
Sourthern Poverty Law Center
the Anti Deffimation League
And others. so called white power music is on the rise and scares the crap out of me at least.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Here is a link to the orginal lyrics, translations and audio files. Soviet National Anthem
I totally agree to our claim about laws to be enforced across borders being bad. But you didn't realize that the US set the beginning of this trend.
I'm for equality; I think it's bad when we do something like that, and I think it's bad when someone else does the same.
I was truely amazed when a plane I took from Equador to Miami after a vacation, all passengers and the whole plane was turned upside down in search of drug by US agents on foreign soil.
The difference, as I see it, is that Germany is insisting that the plane be searched before it's ever allowed to take off from Equador. That is the part that I don't like.
While I don't think it's good for a government to restrict what its citizens can view or listen to, that's between the people and their leadership. I would feel otherwise if Germany were a dictatorship, but they're not; Germans have the right to elect their own anti-censorship government if they want. Therefore, Germany can do whatever they want to within their own borders, for all I care. They just shouldn't expect people outside their borders to agree and go along with their ideals.
If I owned Napster, I'd be pretty angry. If I had wanted to be subject to German laws, I'd move there.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I get the sense it's more they don't think they can AFFORD to tolerate certain kinds of dissenting voices.
I think they figure they're protecting the rest of the world. Consider what must be going through their heads: They caused two world wars, they tried to cause the extinction of a race of people, they almost 0wn3d the planet and committed unspeakable atrocities along the way. They're aware of their capacity to wreak havoc on the global stage, and are TERRIFIED that if they allow any kind of Nazi group to take root, it could all happen again. Or maybe they're trying to assure the rest of the world, by publicly going after this kind of material, that they're taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.
I'm not saying they're right. In my head it plays a bit too much like "protect the children." But I'm just saying there's a reason for this.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Or maybe not. Because as we all know, nothing before 1970 was offensive. *cough*.
---
seumas.com
Easier said than done first you would need to create a database of the songs names and md5sum of all "Bad Songs" at every possible mp3 encoding level. Not a fun task. Then you will have the problem of people changing the songs remixes and stuff. I ould like to see the wonderfull program that does that. They could never really get them all. This will only cause more problems than good for everyone.
Yes, actually, I do. What part of "free" don't you understand? Don't trot out straw men like "fire in a crowded theater" - Oliver Wendell Holmes later bemoaned the fact that his phrase is so frequently misused by people making the point you are (trying to) now.
-j
I forget what 8 was for.
GG Allin's magnum opus, "Kill Thy Father, Rape Thy Mother"?
Or anything at all by Anal Cunt?
"Everyone should know of all information that others have deemed unfit for public knowledge."
Fuck Slashdot
If I might take a well known morality story and alter it slightly to fit this story...
First they came for the Nazis, and I didn't speak up because I don't like Nazis.
Then they came for the Klan, and I didn't speak up because I really hate the Klan.
Then they came for the record companies, and I didn't speak up because I hate them too.
Then they came for Microsoft, and I didn't speak up because I hate Microsoft.
Then they came for me, and nobody spoke up because the culture that hates everything in the name of keeping society safe found something about me that they didn't like.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Big difference. Jews are usually born Jews, and usually don't fantasize about beating the crap out of innocent people.
Uh huh. Sure.
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Finding God in a Dog
sniff sniff...oh dude...that was beautiful...
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Finding God in a Dog
I'm pretty familiar with what Nazis and other white supremacists believe and I think they're all nuts. There is nothing special about white people except that an awful lot of white people seem to control most of the money and can't get out of their suburban hives to save their lives. There is no logical end to a program of racial purity except the homogenization of the gene pool, which is pretty much doomed to failure anyway. White culture is a myth; it is divided deeply into about two dozen different cultures, just as are Asian and Hispanic culture. The only reason why Black culture is so homogenized in the US is because slavery stripped the black people of their cultural identity; as a result they have created a new, uniquely American culture out of whole cloth, and every American is better off for it.
Still, I think it would be humorous to give white supremacists...all of them...a homeland of their own, and watch the Christian Identity and KKK people fight it out with the worshipers of Odin Somefather a real "Holy War." Then maybe the rest of us, with more tolerance for differences and more common sense, will get along better.
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Finding God in a Dog
I might just take up that challenge. I could use $50k. But will IHR take the evidence seriously? Based on the other things I read on their website, IHR strikes me as an organization with a most definite agenda...
The simplest proof, of course, would be a chemical analysis of the area surrounding Auchwitz for proof of the existance of the ovens (for example, high carbon content in the deeper layers of soil) followed by an analysis of residue from the ovens and gas chambers themselves. Start with a null hypothesis that the ovens are *not* used to cremate corpses, or that the so-called gas chambers did use Zyklon B, and go from there. OTOH I strongly suspect that none of this would be sufficient proof for the IHR.
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Finding God in a Dog
First, came online music, which allowed anyone to put their music (or for that matter somebody else's music) out there for public consumption, regardless of the market potential.
Then, came the shotgun marriage of the music industry with online music; which led to the protection of music copyrights while still allowing people to put their music out there for public consumption, regardless of the market potential.
Now, the music industry is moving beyond legitimate protection of their intellectual property, into the realm of controlling what music other people can distribute.
We had to see this coming. The old media want to provide "editorial supervision" of online content, precisely because they make money off of controlling what's popular. Banning Nazi music is only the first step.
Don't get me wrong. I hate Nazis. They're nutcases, provably wrong, violent stupid thugs lacking any shred of sense, dignity, or humanity. There was a time I'd as soon beat one up as talk to one. If Naziism were wiped off the planet I'd be one very happy human being. They have as much right to free expression as we do, and we all lose when free expression is put under corporate control.
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Finding God in a Dog
As much as I am against censorship of the Internet, the sad reality in a country where democracy is not as stable as in the U.S. (true only for East Germany which lived under fascist and stalinist dictatorship from 1933 to 1990) makes me wonder whether libertarian truisms will help.
The problem is as much social as political. The neo-nazis were able to instill themselves into the youth culture by tapping into their hitherto repressed national identity (remember that communism subsumed national identity in the satelite nations to the "world communist revolution"), their discontent, and the youthful rebelliousness that is a trait of every generation.
The solution is to offer an alternative that is equally rebellious, allows expression of one's discontent, etc. Not an easy task, but doable. Remember, what's cool in 2000 will look terribly dated in 2010 -- unless nothing is present to displace what was big in 2000.
Censorship just makes neo-nazism appear even cooler in the eyes of the rebellious (which is a huge chunk of any youthful generation) -- how many people here downloaded DeCSS because of efforts to ban it, but have never even bothered to unpack the tarball? I have, multiple times in multiple locations, as I'm sure many thouands of others did. The same phenomenon is true of neo-nazi music (and most things in life, actually) -- ban it and it flourishes all the more. Don't ban it, but speak out against it and emphesize how uncool, idiotic, unsophisticated, and passe it is (come on, the philosophy was a dead end sixty years ago!), and while you won't eliminate it it will lose much of its luster and return to its status of a psychotic fringe element (which every society has and most manage to cope with reasonably well) while the youthful masses move on to the new, cool thing (whatever that is).
Censorship isn't just wrong. It is ineffective, counterproductive, and bought at far too high a cost.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
As others have posted, Wagner died in 1883, and _Parsifal_, his last opera, was finished in 1882.
~wog
I'm not defending Wagner so much as I am defending scholarship. It is fine to produce a monograph which seeks to prove that Wagner's every motivation was based on antisemitism, and only cites other sources which back up this claim, ignoring a great deal of other Wagner scholarship, but it is foolish to read this monograph and no differing viewpoints.
BTW, to see why you shouldn't hyphenate "antisemitism", click here. According to that page (with which I am inclined to agree), hyphenating "antisemitism" basically means that you think "Semitic" is meaningful, and that defamation of Jews is based on "their race," which is a worrisome (at best) stance to take.
~wog
wrong link for the Jerusalem Report article. Go here
It is odd that many of the greatest (and most nationalistic) composers in the German-speaking world have been Jewish, given the German-speaking world's history of antisemitism (especially in musical circles).
Mendelssohn, for example, whose father had assimilated, saved J.S. Bach's works from obscurity and wrote wonderful Lutheran church and art music, including the incredible "Reformation Symphony". (As a practicing Lutheran, I can vouch for his authenticity of expression and doctrine.) Gustav Mahler, who assimilated, was attacked for his "sensual Semitic ultramodernism" even though his brilliant music was far more conservative of Germanate tradition than that of his Gentile contemporary, Richard Strauss. Both Mendelssohn and Mahler's works were outlawed in Nazi Germany.
The list goes on and on...German culture has been saved, preserved, and perfected by Jews so many times that it is completely incomprehensible how such a pandemic antisemitism could exist for so long.
Hitler mainly liked Wagner because his music was so nationalist, and he (like nearly everyone else in the German-speaking world of the 19th century) failed miserably to rise above the prevailing antisemitism of his day.
Wagner is a very complicated character; he wrote some terribly obscene essays (i.e. "Das Judentum in Musik", which was actually a criticism of Meyerbeer and French Ope'ra), but he actively opposed fascism and religious persecution. The central influence in Wagner's philosophy was not antisemitism, as many are wont to claim, but rather an amalgam of Schopenhauer, early Nietzsche (don't even get started about _Will to Power_, which was written by Nietzsche's sister and which most scholars agree is antithetical to Nietzsche's philosophy), Buddhism and medieval mysticism.
~wog
(Yeah, I'm a CS grad, but I had music history and philosophy majors as an undergrad.)
Wagner's music is not hateful or defamatory. Some critical theorists have tried to demonstrate that it is, but most explanations I've seen don't hold as much water as they would need to. If you want to see real "Nazi opera", look at the works of Hans Pfitzner, whose sole goal in life was to be the court composer to the Third Reich.
Wagner is slowly gaining acceptance in Israel, but Hitler's near-fetishistic obsession with some of Wagner's music (like the Tannhauser overture, which Wagner insisted wsa played whenever he entered a room) has left a lasting tarnish on Wagner in many eyes. Look at this article in Jerusalem Report. While it contains some factual inaccuracies about Wagner's music, it presents some interesting counterpoints from Wagner opponents and Wagner defenders.
That the various races tend to socialize with each other isn't really ethnic unity beyond some social preference, and actually shows how blind you are to the differences *between* the ethnic subgroups we know as asians, arabs, etc.
Every single African I've ever met, from recent Somali immigrants to those I've met in college actively resent being labeled "black". A Kenyan clued me in this way: This was a real eye opener, because like most college students I had bought into the left's fantasy of racial unity. The more non-American blacks I met the more I realized they have differences more dramatic than most Europeans have and they *all* totally resent any linkage with American Blacks. I'm sure this same situation exists with every other racial group as well.
Ever stop and realize that maybe non-whites do have a reason to mistrust whites? When were whites ever enslaved by blacks or asians?
Ghengis Khan comes to mind, but Asians really have never enslaved whites primarily due to the dramatic geographic boundaries seperating Europe and the far East (I'm presuming that by Asian you mean Chinese, Japanese, et al). By the time Europeans and Asians had any meaningful, frequent contact the Europeans had overwhelming military superiority and were traveling to Asia. By the same token, Europeans dominated Asians militarily and economically but never "enslaved" them in any strict sense of the word. The same goes for Blacks; the Sahara desert made a significant geographic barrier to any sub-Saharan/European contact which would have resulted in a slave trade. The slave trade between Africa and the Americas was largely a "modern" phenomenon and was also was wholly controlled on the supply side by Africans, who had been enslaving each other for centuries.
For a commentary on the domination of Europeans by Arabs, I ask you to look at the history of the Balkan and Southeastern region of Europe, as well as Moorish occupation of Spain for examples.
Much of the "non-white racial pride" is pure fantasy propegated by Western liberals. Ethnic unity among Blacks, Asians, Arabs simply does not exist. Africa is quite possibly one of the most fractured regions in the world. Ask yourself who perpetrated the slaughter in Rwanda -- it certainly wasn't White on Black. Asia again is another example -- find me some Manchurian or Koreans who have good things to say about the Japanese, particularly those who lived through the Japanese occupations. Indian subcontinant? Nope, not there -- Pakistanis and Indians. And let's not forget the warm relations between the Malays and the Chinese, Fijians and Indians and so on.
The truth is that Whites hardly have a corner on racism. Other races are as racist if not more so than Whites, especially when its not directed at Whites.
If "what they think is right" is the answer, then "do they have a responsibility" is a meaningless question. What we mean when we ask each other "do they have a responsibility" is, what do *you* think is right? What do *we* think? "Not really" is Jamie's answer.
So I'd say two for three. Go Jamie!
No, they could comply by taking an approach similar to the one they've used for copyright violation under the DMCA: Provide a way for users to report Nazi music, provide a process for determining whether it really is, eliminate music that's judged offensive.
"Is this nazi propaganda?" may be harder to judge than "Is this a song somebody else wrote?" But it's just a matter of having more tricky cases, a matter of degree.
The fact that something can't be implemented automatically or "perfectly" doesn't mean it can't be implemented.
Since I didn't clarify this in my previous post: I'm not saying I like this idea. But the argument from technical infeasibility is a losing one. We need to focus on the ethical points instead. Like you're doing, I guess.
It's really no different than the piracy issue. Is the entity that creates a tool for sharing (whether it's Napster, ftpd, Apache, etc) responsible if the users of that tool happen to use it to share illegal or distasteful files?
If Napster caves in on this Nazi issue, then they are accepting responsibility for everything that all Napster users do.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I didn't even know such a thing existed...
Well I do now... so wheres that racist beat?
This nonsence only appeals to people who are allready racist...
Banning mention of the desease dosn't stop the disease..
Just generates press for those who hate...
As far as banning offensive stuff gose...
Looks like the Krull finnaly found a way to shut down Napster...
"We are now banning the last 3 remainning soungs that can be downloaded by Napster becouse they are relentlessly chearful and could be offensive to the cronicly depressed"
I don't actually exist.
YI totally agree to our claim about laws to be enforced across borders being bad. But you didn't realize that the US set the beginning of this trend.
Ever heared of Super 101 ? Or have flown from some Latin American countries to the US? I was truely amazed when a plane I took from Equador to Miami after a vacation, all passengers and the whole plane was turned upside down in search of drug by US agents on foreign soil.
The US penalizes countries that don't cooperate or have laws that the US doesn't like with trade barriers, boycotting international conferences in that country or bulling with veto rights in UN or snatching criminals across the border with (para-)military action. This clearly violates other countries sovereignity.
And if Napster doesn't cooperate, they won't be allowed to operate inside German borders. It's as simple as that. And Napster being now a German-owned company, it doesn't seem they are asking to enforce their laws across borders. That Nazis in the US (where such racisst activity is legal and common) can't download the Music, because it's banned for German Users, that's a just a unfortunate (though welcome) side-effect
# And yes, I have seen many people with tons of Nazi-shit on Napster
# Is there any client for Linux that can put people on a kill-list ?
from the FAQ:
"2. What happens if we're actually talking about Nazis?
hen you've already invoked Godwin's Law, and the chances are that your thread isn't going to last all that much longer as a sane discussion.
Them's the breaks."
------ Poo-tee-weet?
The opinions on /. seem to be divided between those who see napster as a phone company that is required to carry all transmissions between two private parties and those who see napster as a television channel free to carry only those transmissions that it feels meet its own criteria.
I don't see that free speech or censorship has anything to do with the issue. The issue is whether Napster should be viewed legally as a common carrier. My opinion is that it shouldn't have to carry what it doesn't want to carry.
If you want to provide a service for distributing nazi music, go ahead and do it on your own time with your own money. That is freedom.
On Napster, they first came for the Nazi musicians, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Nazi musician. Then they came for the Rappers, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Rapper. Then they came for the Hip-Hop listeners, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Hip-Hop listener. Then they came for the (whatever) and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a (whatever). Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up. They came for your whiny ass at the end though right? Sounds like all in a good days work to me.
One would hope that if the government holds Napster responsible for any copyrighted music being transferred by their system, they would also be responsible for any hate literature as well.
The latter is much more damaging than the former.
So similarly, if Microsoft decided that only "Microsoft-approved" software (simple examples, no web browsers or office suites other than IE and Office would qualify as "approved") could run on Windows from now on, this would be completely OK with you? You wouldn't see it is as a problem? Everybody should just not use their service?
Of course, MS being a monopoly, this is perhaps a different situation to that of BMG/Napster. Nonetheless merger mania is likely to produce many more monopolies in the future, some of which have the potential to stifle economies for decades (e.g. Time/Warner/AOL would have a lot of potential here ..)
Legally you are completely correct though, the concept of censorship does not apply to companies. Antitrust+anticompetitive, yes, but this clearly isn't the case here. The anti-nazi-propaganda laws here do however appear to come from the government.
Ever heard of a bunch known as the Japanese? A bunch who disregarded the Geneva conventions and used US & British soldiers as slaves?
Perh. you've not studied your history--just about everyone has enslaved just about everyone. Christianity spread to England because a Pope of Rome saw some Angles being sold. There was quite a vigourous slave trade among the Arabs. The Vikings enslaved those they conquered.
We just managed to turn scientific and advanced before everyone else, expanded rapidly, and won. It's not that we're any more evil and nasty than any other race--we're all men, and we're all rotten to one another.
We may have subjugated the world, but we also freed it, you know...
Napster has always been a business entity - the deal with BMG was struck for that very reason. Shawn Fanning, the cap-wearing GenY-er who is always prominent in the Napster media stories barely owns a couple of percent of Napster, Inc. They just trot him out to promote a 'cool' image, for obvious reasons: lots of people will side with Napster as long as they see them as being some plucky underdogs giving music for free to be shared amongst kids who look just like good ol' Shawn.
Reality check. Napster's owned and run by a bunch of your typical faceless suit-wearing executives. They run Napster not because they want to share music for free with college kids, but because they hold the keys to the Napster user database, and through that a distribution model that could destroy the business model of many record companies.
So Napster's not a business entity now that they struck a deal with BMG. They struck the deal so they could get a brief break from legal feuding, and present a more friendly face to all those judges. Now they can legitimately claim that they really want to make deals with record companies, and that they're the good guys. It also split the RIAA, with one of their biggest suporters suddenly going renegade. Next time Hank Barry (CEO) and Shawn Fanning (Founder) are interviewed, or sit in front of a judge, they can shrug helplessly and smile, pointing at how they struck a deal with BMG: why then don't all of the other companies want to co-operate?
So please - cut all the pro-napster propaganda. Those guys are out to make money, and the reason why Napster's still free is because every hour they don't charge, they sign up another 1000 guys and put them in their database. If and when they ever go 100% commercial, at least a dozen of those thousand/hour WILL sign up... and that's a couple dozen million bucks a month for Napster, Inc.
And hey, look - they got the customers, and deals with record labels, too. Swell, eh?
Alex T-B
St Andrews
"Zdnet and CNN report that Napster's new business partner BMG has been requested to stop all trading of music with lyrics that some find offensive"
That was from the original post on slashdot. You say that they've taken the next step of declaring this stuff harmful. Guess what, its the same thing. Attacks on porn are also often made using the excuse that it too is "harmful." It all boils down to the same thing, a person or group attempting to decide for the rest of us what we should see or hear. Sometimes I'm utterly amazed that people as a whole put up with it, but then I remember that most people are sheep.
I'm not a nazi and most porn frankly bores me. But I'll be damned if I'm going to put up with someone else trying to prevent me from viewing either kind of material. A free society depends on freedom of information, regardless of how offensive it is or how uncomfortable it might make some segments of the society.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I'm not sure where the idea came from that something should be banned or prohibited because someone somewhere finds it offensive, but its pure bunk. If someone finds something offensive, they're free ignore it. Ultimately this "I'm offended" excuse is nothing more than another attempt at censorship. The truth is that whether something is offensive or not isn't the real reason anyone complains, they complain because they're afraid you or I might see it. I'm sorry but I'll decide for myself whether I want to listen to a song, read a book, watch a movie etc. etc. Whether or not you approve of the content or want me to experience it is irrelevant. Censorship is evil any way you look at it. It doesn't much matter what you are censoring. In fact I would argue that content such as Nazi propaganda is the last thing we want to censor because if people are not familiar with it, they will not recognize similar current day propaganda, of which there is much around. I think napster should simply tell them to go to hell. Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
People do bad things but you can't just blame other people for that because they happen to have the same color of skin as the bad guys have.
0x or or snor perron?!
Actually this enters a very murky area. In this case german law could or could not apply because of the base of Bertlemann(or whoever yous epll it). BUT Napster is not a german company but does business with one. I don't know who german law would apply to services like this.
Truth is internaltional law in regards to the internet is still very unresolved. The French Yahoo case is an example as is some others in regards to the VAT tax.
Now as a private company napster could do this. They aren't bound by the constitution in the same manner as the US government. If someone could prove it was discriminatory based on personal beliefs then there could bea case possible i think.
this space for rent
And the Napster thing, apparently, is being directed at Bertelsmann -- a German company, bound by German law.
I live in a country just north of Germany (Denmark).
/Napster /nazi controversy, is _not_ a slippery slope down censorship alley. Read the article; it is the german Verfassungsschutz (The bureau for protection of the constitution), who is instigating this matter.
I do understand the german postion, although my own country has a completely different position. But there is also a completly, vastly different, historic backgrund; The 3. Reich instigated a truly massive genocide; something like 25% (one in four) polaks died during the occupation, around 9 million people was killed in the KZ-camp systems. The whole eastern campaign was a systematic genocidal annihilation war (about 20 milions russians died).
Then, the Third Reich suddenly collapsed in May 1945, leaving Germany as a physically and morally devasted country. How on earth was Germany, and the german people, ever going to return to the civilized company of other states?
The simply had to start from ground zero, building up a democratic state and constitution, but without the benefit of a "clean sheet". The historic burden was massive. (Oh, yaeh: remember this was only 55 years ago, some of the nazi butchers, are still alive)
Among one of the things the new German state did, was to outlaw Nazi-parties and their propaganda, and to incorperate this in their democratic constitution; The germans that took over the power, would not chance a nazi-regime come-back.
But even if the germans themselves, would not have wanted this, their occupaters (incl. usa), would probably have enforced such a law.
But this is my point; The BMG
It is not a random surge of "We-must-protect-the-children" censorship (who often seems to have so many other hidden agendas behind their campaigns).
The Verfassungsschutz is enacting on basis of their constitution, and they do this, because the German state firmly believes in democracy.
For all what I know of Germany, this controversy, is not the first step, of increasing censorship.
What about Wagner? His music was widely used under Hitler. I recently heard a story on NPR about an Isreali conductor who recently played a single piece (in a larger concert) by Wagner. The Public Address system advised the audience, and allowed time for people to leave.
Should Wagner be banned from Napster?
Of course everybody is racist. There is an old joke it goes like this.
"why are the catholics and the protestants fighting in ireland?"
"Because that's what happens in a country with no blacks, puerto ricans or jews". People are generally racist and will find somebody to hate for whatever reason.
The real question is not who is racist and who is not but who has the power to act on their racism. A black man living in the unner city maybe a racist but so what he can't to nothing to you. If OTOH a rich and powerful white man is racist then he can make life miserable for the people he hates. It becomes especially bad if the racist person is a cop, mayor, politician, radio show host etc.
War is necrophilia.
In america there is no shortage of hatred or people to hate. The loggers, miners, ranchers and the farmers hate the enviromentalists enough to actually gun them down. The baptists hate the catholics and they both hate abortion doctors enough to actually gun them down. Most of the inland united states hates the coastal residents so much that they can not get themselves to mention them without cursing. Of course everybody hates the gays and moslems.
Amerca is a country driven by hate if you don't believe me just watch MSNBC, Foxnews, CNBC, CNN or listen to any AM radio anywhere in America. Trust me we will not run out of hate any time soon.
War is necrophilia.
title says it all
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
"Amazingly Ignorant Of History" isn't one of the moderation choices, so "Funny" will have to do....
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Wasn't Wagner's (sp?) "Ring Cycle" (I think I have that right) written (and performed) during the Nazi regime?
If so (I am so lacking in this area), couldn't putting up a bit of music from this opera constitute going against what they are after...
OK, I know it is a stretch (to the breaking point) - I might not even have any of this right - someone correct me and mod me down if I am wrong...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The truest white racism is the attitude coming from the liberal establishment that says that minorities shouldn't have to meet the same strict requirements that whites do for things like school and employment.
It cut both ways.
Until they did away with racially categorized SAT scores, "whites" could get in to the University of California with lower scores than could "asians". It was based on scoring each race seperately. The "average" white score was lower than an "average" asian score. To get in one had to score above average. Hence with the same scores a white person would be doing "really good for a white person", but the asian would be "below average for an asian".
In terms of the median, he is correct. Whats amazing is that there there is a larger percentage of the black population above middle class than there are of the white population. What is perhaps missing from the anaylsis is that the teany tiny percentage (7%?) of white people at the top own half of everything here. In terms of making it to upper middle class, blacks are doing better than whites. The class ceiling is making it into the elites. :-)
Flamebait, my ass. Stupid ass moderators.
My favorite radio station, KFJC, has a show by anti-fascist researcher Dave Emory. Now, I don't buy everything that Dave says, but he sure is interesting to listen to (I like conspiracy theories). One of the topics he covers very frequently is the "Bormann flight capital organization", which involves "Nazi in exile" Martin Bormann evacuating a lot of wealth from Germany, starting in 1944 -- apparently because the Nazis were anticipating a loss in the war and wanted to start up operations elsewhere. This ties in with the "South American Nazis" you may have heard about (or whose card you may have played in Illuminati! by Steve Jackson Games).
One thing that Dave Emory keeps talking about is the fact that Bertelsmann has been acquiring a great deal of the publishing industry. He seems to think that this is part of the Bormann organization's plans for worldwide fascism or something. Frankly, this is one area where Dave starts losing me -- I think he's too quick to connect things that are German with attempts to found the Fourth Reich (using economic conquest rather than military conquest).
So anyway, given the recent BMG partnership with Napster, I initially thought that the "Nazis on Napster" article might parallel some things I've heard on various Dave Emory programs. Life got just a little bit more surreal for a few seconds, until I started reading further.
-- $SIGNATURE
I've seen several Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and none has worn a suit. None has been faceless either for that matter.
Your main point is correct, of course. Just nitpicking. It's my inalianable right.
I agree with everything you say aside from "Ethnic unity among Blacks, Asians, Arabs simply does not exist." This is a blatant falsehood. I question as to whether you even KNOW any minorities.
I am white. I am in college. My roommate is black. He's a great guy and there is no racial tension there but, one may notice that nearly ALL of his friends are black. Even the ones he didn't grow up with. There are black clubs on campus to bring them all together. He has even commented that he knows pretty much every black guy on campus because "when you are a minority, you kind of band together." He's not racist in any way but, as a minority, he feels a small bond with fellow blacks.
There are also Asian clubs on campus and my Asian friends are the same. Great guys. By they also band together with fellow Asians to a certain extent. Not exclusively of course, but you will note a disproportionate number of their friends are also Asian.
I have no problem with this. People of common color may be more likely to share common backgrounds. A disproportionate number of my black friends grew up in trailer parks or other "low-income" housing areas so they have a common bond in that regard.
To wander a little off topic from this reply, if you were to hang around with mostly redheads, people would think it was wierd, but that's it. It's just a preference. I like women with blue eyes. That's not racist. I hang around with mostly geeks, because I share common interests with them. I don't see why it should be any different with "races", since they don't exist. We all have the same skin, it's just pigment. Same as eye or hair color. Anyway, enough of my ranting, I'm tired. Goodnight.
Justin Dubs
I think you need to bear in mind that German society is understandably quite paranoid about Nazi and Nazi-related material. Unlike Americans, whp have never elected an onjectional government and never tried to unduely exert influence over its neighbours, German people are scared about the image Nazi's give the country.
Many people outside of Germany still associate the word Nazi exclusively with the country, and you can see this would affect the mindset of German people.
Wasn't it Bertlesmann that was intertwined with Hitler's Nazi government in the 30s? Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
--
Communication is only possible between equals
Do you know the words? (well YOU better LEARN) Everyone sing along (or else)!
Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics,
Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
Created in struggle by will of the people,
United and mighty, our Soviet land!
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
Through tempests the sunrays of freedom have cheered us,
Along the new path where great Lenin did lead.
To a righteous cause he raised up the peoples,
Inspired them to labor and valorous deed.
[Or, the original way:
Be true to the people, thus Stalin has reared us,
Inspire us to labor and valorous deed!]
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
In the vict'ry of Communism's deathless ideal,
We see the future of our dear land.
And to her fluttering scarlet banner,
Selflessly true we always shall stand!
Capt. Ron
crazy dynamite monkey
"
/ \ ASCII ribbon against e-mail
\ / in HTML and M$ proprietary formats.
X
/ \
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
>Some races are just better at certain things than others, and it will always be that way.
Evidence? For the first assertion, I mean - the second is obviously false.
>Africans are great runners and atheletes,
Some are, some aren't. Ditto Europeans, Asians, Americans, Australians...
>asians are good at math,
Some are, some aren't. Ditto Australians, Americans, Europeans, Africans...
>and white people just seem to have the ability to live in almost an climate...
Oh, yeah, that would explain why the Horn of Africa was so healthy for European colonists, and why the Vikings in Greenland thrived through environmental changes that wiped out the Inuit. [/sarcasm]
>I know that sounds a bit sterotypical, but sometimes sterotypes can be true...
Like the stereotype that all racists are stupid, perhaps? There have been some very accomplished racist scholars in the past (JBS Haldane, for example), but they seem to be pretty thin on the ground here.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
>It's not censorship unless it comes from a government agency...
WTF?
So when censorware blocks its critics, that isn't censorship because the government doesn't require it? When heretics were burned in the Middle Ages that wasn't censorship because it was church law, not the state? Please stop trying to arbitrarily redefine words and write something constructive (or nothing).
Furthermore, how is this relevant? This music is banned by governments, who are trying to stop Napster from distributing it.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
I've listened to a sampling of racist, Nazi music and it's not likely to reach a huge audience just because it's on Napster. It's the worst music I've ever heard. Even if I could ignore the lyrics, I think I'd prefer "Achy Breaky Heart" on infinite replay. For some reason, racist imbeciles don't make good musicians, go figure.
Writing good songs requires quite a bit of skill. Not only do you need to learn to properly play your instruments, develop some music theory, etc., you also have to live through some experiences that lend depth to your music. The best music is representative of the emotions and ideas of the musician. It's an external reflection of what's inside the songwriter.
Someone who refuses to allow their worldview to expand beyond their own little personal prejudices is unlikely to be able to write anything that anyone who has gone beyond that level will appreciate. Or, to restate that in a slightly clearer context:
A brilliant, thoughtful, sensitive guy who happens to be a musician is more likely to write great songs than would a hate-filled, dogmatic moron who just happens to be a musician.
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
This is not about a person self-censoring, it's about a person censoring others who use that person's communication services.
Only the most dogmatic libertarian could insist that censorship is bad merely because it constitutes an exercise of state power directed against private persons. Rather, censorship is bad because it impedes the free flow of ideas and information. It is true, that the state, having the monopoly of legislative power has traditionally had a greater opportunity effectively to censor. It would, however, be no less undesirable if, to give a concrete example, Microsoft decided to build a filter into IE, with the purpose of blocking any site containing the word 'Linux.' Corporate constraint of individual expression, all other things being equal, is also (potentially) "bad." It is true also, and this would seem to be the point of your argument, that the situation with regard to privately owned services is complicated by the property rights of service owners (ie all other things are not equal). Telling an owner not to censor content seems to amount to little more than forcing them to carry certain content. Such complication, however, seems unlikely to be resolved by the application of unthinking slogans such as "all information must be free," or "property is paramount." In any case, desirable as property law might be, other consideration do, on occasion, call for the media to be "forced" to carry certain information.
At a time in history when the state is in retreat and the power of corporations grows beyond restraint, it is blinkered ideology stubbornly to cling to a theory of free speech (though it may have been perfectly servicable in the 18th century) which is able to see government alone as having the potential to supress freedom of communication. As free speech theorist Richard Able has recently pointed out (and he speaks from experience), in the contemporary world (at least in western democracies) it is private constraints on speech which are "more powerful and pervasive than state censorship." (see his Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech).
If the owners of services which carry the communications of individuals choose to censor those communications, whether merely out of undue deference to various cultural sensitivities, or more directly as an exercise of power, the result is an insipid, deformed, and at worst systematically biased public discourse. This is as inimical to democracy as it is to cultural development itself. A world in which Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch are left free to determine which ideas and information the rest of us are to be exposed to, and which ideas will be kept from us, seems no more desirably than one in which such decisions are made by officials amenable to democratic control. If, as a society (or societies) we decide that certain information ought not to be free (as is almost universally the case with child pornography), it would seem to me better that such a decision is made (and is reversible) by democratic means.
I think you are wrong when you say gangsta rap will be next because of a prevailing double standard in this country. If you were to ban gangsta rap, it would be called racist and Jesse Jackson would be all over the news. If you were to ban any sort of white power music, no one would make any fuss about it. Somehow people got it in their heads that it's alright to be racist, if you're a black person, but not if you're a white person. Personally, I don't get it, I don't see a difference in people because of appearance, and anyone who is dumb enough to gladly has my blessing to write offensive music that will get them shot, cleaning out the gene pool a bit.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
Hm.... I do not get that.
Since when is Rap illegal?
Since when is Hip-Hop illegal?
Since when are you illegal?
Nazi music is illegal. And the Nazis are those who come after "The Rappers" and "The Hip Hopers" and finaly they come after you.
Napster is their platform to gather more sympatists.
And if they are enough they will win an election somewhere and then everybody will applaude if they come after you.
Do you realy believe everybody is allowed to spread every stupid shit of his ill attitude under the banner of free speach?
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"i may not like what you have to say, but i'll defend, to the death, your right to say it."
voltaire is my role model. his caustic pen and cunning wit have helped me through the monotony of public high school.
As napster is now a business, their "transactions" in those countries are likewise part of this business. This is why you can't use eBay to buy Nazi memorabilia in Germany (or kiddie porn, for that matter), or, for another example, you couldn't download IE with SSL until recently in France, because of their encryption laws. (either that or the encryption was heavily reduced, i can't recall)
the difference with the example above re: IE and kiddie porn is that Napster is not only the client software but is also the search mechanism.
Germany, France and some other European countries (i think?) have laws about the distribution of Nazi-related material, ie that it is criminal activity. Think what you will about this "limitation" of freedom of speech, this is the law in these countries, and if a company wants to exist or trade there, they have to abide by their rules. As now does Napster.
:>
A good parallel to look into this would be eBay - they have people selling war relics, for historical/collectible value. Items at all connected to the Nazi party are prohibited for sale to users in these countries - I imagine they do some sort of lookup between keywords and user's details.
Certainly this isn't too difficult to evade if one is intent on it, but it covers their asses. And this is what it is about, Napster has to put in place some similar safeguard, for instance IP ranges which are not allowed to download songs with any such keywords in the title, or to force the user to set a country of residence in registration.
This won't fix the problem 100%, but if the countries want this as their law, they can't expect Napster et al to do all their work for them. I'm sure they know how to put their own content filters in place at their ISPs if they're serious about it
Fross
What I want to know is: Why the hell do American companies do anything other than ignore this sort of thing? I understand that in this case BMG is based in Germany, which makes them liable under German law, but what about other cases? For example, why didn't Yahoo just tell the French to stick it? It this a result of the WTO allowing countries to restrict each other's businesses based on their own laws?
We're supposedly moving towards the one world government. We can't even deal with a simple little international network!
Simple? I can't speak for everyone, and I'm certainly no historian, but I'd say the Internet is one of, if not THE most complicated political, social and scientific phenomenon ever to arise in human history.
kugano
Some may say that Nazi lyrics are offensive while others may disagree. Who is to say what is offensive? I may find some rap lyrics offensive while others may like them and not think they are harmful. This is opening up a can of worms that is not wanted.
>neotope
Finding offensive music is exactly the same issue.
--
Twivel
First ammendment to what? As far as I know Napster doesn't have a constitution.
If you're refering to the U.S. constitution it only ensures that you could start your own web site/service to trade as much nazi music as you like.
Napster only has to look out for Napster's interests. It's too bad, but it's the way the universe works.
-Andy
Well, it is too bad. Because it'd be cooler if everyone was watching out for everyone else. Then this wouldn't even be an issue.
But that's just not how the universe works. The way the universe does work is people look out for themselves. Including Napster and the nazis.
There's nothing wrong with this. It's just that some people don't quite seem to understand why Napster isn't looking out for them personaly.
-Andy
I suggest you read the excellent book "Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide by Sven Lindqvist (or any other of his books on the subject of racism) on the few centuries long organized genocide Europeans put on in Africa. Might wave off some of the right-wing hypocrisy you are spouting.
See also this and this on Lindqvist and forementioned books.
______________
______________
OTTERS RULE.
We must protect the rights to free speech only of those who will allow others to speak freely.
Following this logic, noone gets free speech. If you deny any one else free speech, for whatever reason, then you dont allow others to speak freely. Thus, according to the above dictum, you have no right to free speech either.
I sometimes wonder why it must be so hard for some people to understand that either you have free speech, or you dont. If you deny anyone it, for any reason, then you are no better than a nazi yourself. So you think that promoting speech you agree with makes you tolerant? The true test of tolerance is tolerating ideas you disagree with, or even find repulsive or sickening.
Thats why we must tolerate even nazis expressing themselves, because if we dont, we are no better than they.
It would also be advisable to stop demonizing them or thinking them idiotic morons. Most actually are not particularly stupid, have reasons for their stance, and the injustices they are exposed to only serve to deepen and justify their hatred for what they view as a corrupt society. The end result of the present policies will be a group of harder, more determined, relentless and fanatical nazis, more predisposed to real terorism than yelling "Sieg Heil" while drunk. Of course the police will win the confrontation in the end, but at what cost? Both in terms of victims of bombings and such, and in the Police State created thus.
If you want to improve things, rather approach them with rational arguments, understanding and love and teach them that there is a better way than the way of hate.
/Dervak
Other races are as racist if not more so than Whites, especially when its not directed at Whites.
"Other races" are not racist, stupid individuals are.
Interestingly, I popped Tristan on right before seeing this article. Will I be able to download Wagner's music from Napster? How about Carmina Burana (the official music of the Nazi regime)? Or The Merry Widow (penned by Hitler's favorite composer)?
In any case, I doubt most Slashdotter's are old enough to remember the PMRC and Tipper Gore (who was only a couple of hundred pregnant chads away from being the Frst Lady) of the late 80's and early 90's. The resolution, interestingly, was the RIAA who fought vigorously against music censorship, and Hilary Rosen herself won an award from the ACLU for defending the First Amendment.
Will the RIAA fight for this (BMG's membership notwithstanding)? Although there is a heck of a lot of fantastic music associated with the Nazi's (see first paragraph), it, unfortunately, is highly politically incorrect defend Nazi's in any manner.
Every time an issue like this appears on slashdot, we get 10^6 iterations of the 'propertarian defense': "It's their property; they can do what they want."
In addition to the point you made, the propertarian defense tries to answer the question "Does Acme have the right to censor foo?" rather than "should Acme censor foo?" In other words, would such censorship cause us customers to like or dislike the company?
"Nazi music would incite protest. Nazi's are a universal evil that we always rise up to squash whenever we can."
By squashing them, you act just like them. What makes you any better then? _Reacting_ with rage is just like "them", an opposite reaction of negative energy instead of _acting_ out of love and courage.
On the other hand, if you carefully try to educate, tolerate and accept them for who they are, they are much more likely to listen to you and you to listen to them. Everybody has something to teach eachother (good and bad). People following Nazism isn't doing this because they are inherently evil and neither are "we". By suppressing them we do both them and ourselves a huge disfavour.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
This guy says exactly what's on my mind. Too bad I blew my moderation by posting earlier.
How do people plan to wipe Nazism off the face of the earth? It is part of us all, for good and for worse. You can't kill ideas, unless the people themselves choose for themselves to go other ways. For people to be able to do this, they need to understand and accept the past, not being forced by propaganda, censorship and book-burnings.
In the broader picture, Nazism was conceieved by even greater negative ideas that inhibit humanity. So these events will keep reoccuring until we get the point.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Well if white racism is so bad (yes I know you're playing devil's advocate) then why don't minorities take the moral high ground and be quite the opposite? The truest white racism is the attitude coming from the liberal establishment that says that minorities shouldn't have to meet the same strict requirements that whites do for things like school and employment. Frankly I must say the modern liberal establishment reeks of the old white man's burden rhetoric.
It is a sad state of affairs when "nazi" music is attacked but racist music, much of which is gangsta rap isn't. We are sending a bad message to people that could end up being racists: if you're white it is evil, if you're non-white it is just racial pride. But as was pointed out, banning makes it taboo and humans LOVE taboos. All of this makes as much sense as sticking a light outside in an attempt to drive insects away.
There is always irritation about the way radical (not necessarily in politial sense -> scintology) ambitions are being dealt with in Germany.
You should consider to judge this from the historical perspective. The founders of the German Grundgesetz (constitutional law) had their Weimarer experiences in their minds when engraving basic principals on the young democracy, convinced that even a state its citizens have already turned away from could possibly be saved from being wiped off by extremist parties. Its that kind of trauma that results in having failed once in doing everything that can be done.
"Wer einen tanzenden Stern gebären will..." F.N.
Napster is totally different though, because instead of listening to a continuous stream of audio, you pick and choose what you want to listen to. If you happened to pick a song to download that offends you, you have nobody to blame (this is very similar to the web itself if you think about it).
There is also plenty of legal precedent against this, with free speech being protected over most other virtues: nazi marches are protected even though they're hurtful to jews and blacks, TV stations have a right to broadcast just about any kind of information they want, despite the clear embarrassment of the people involved.
Brass, mostly. Ommm, pa pa.
Sweet Jesus, bring it on!
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I can't see any practical solution for this, and if the German gov't and its courts require Napster to find a way to cease the exchange of hate music, I think its just going to wind up that German users can't use Napster.
Anyone else have a thought on this?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
ObTopic: Napster can censor whomever they feel like, no one is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to download stuff using their software. Besides, Nazis are like child pornographers; they have no redeeming social value whatsoever. Good for them for censoring Nazis.
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
NO CARRIER
This discussion should be over pretty soon :)
---
Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
NO CARRIER
for napster to consider banning/blocking 'nazi' (and any similar) material. there are several reasons this is a bad idea, let me hit on a couple.
1) as soon an 'athoritive' figure attempts to supress something, those found under its control almost immidiatly see new worth to the subject matter. Did yor parents tell you your couldnt drink beer/smoke cigarettes? how many of you did so anyway? and how much of that desire was driven by the fact that "you're not supposed to". Those of you who can see what im saying here - but agree with what napster might do, need to take that example one step farther considering how shitty cigarettes taste - but how you "did it anyway - cause it was cool". If we make contraband of such material - then suddenly we have people distributing it, and getting into it initially, simply because of its 'im not supposed to do this' appeal.
2) I believe that suppression of material/subject matter tends to push that topic into an area of the 'taboo subject', this is far from what we need about these sort of topics - we need to be able to address them at any time, we need to be able to see these opinions - so that they can be discredited. whispered rumors linger, and tend to be 'belived' because of their secritive nature.
3) following the same line that jamie mentioned, whats next? filtering chumbawamba?
the above is just a couple reasons why companies who provide services like what napster does - need to be blind to the content, and treat it all equally - regardless. this is all art, art is expression, expression is derived from opinion - we all have a right to our opinion - regardless of how others preceive it (which is why jamies stab about hate bands having no talent is a totally mute point). The right for any individual to express their opinion is in itself, its own safeguard - because what you state as your opinion can be combated by the opinions of others. and onlookers may find themselves persuaded (to ether side) based on what they gain from the opinionated arguments of the disagreeing parties. finding themselves siding with the party that comes closest to mirroring thier ideals. This can be bad or good for the individual - certain some incredibly ignorant people can be pursuasive, and certainly ignorant people can be pursuaded - but we simply have no right to decide what peoples opinions are!
this reminds me of a conversation i had with a friend of mine - who, i'll mention, it quite intellegent. we were sitting in a living room and on top of the coffee table (on some magazine or what have you) there was a photo, a photo i am intimatly familiar with - a US marine in vietnam, putting a pistol to the head of a bound man in the street, and taking his life at that moment in time. As we were sitting there, my friend, half attempting to be funny, and at the same time being quite serious, stated something to the effect of "Man, this guy gets killed and the photographer wins the poltzer prize just for being there, isint that fucked up?", i considered his statement and retorted, "Mabye you should ask the victim - but i'll tell you that i think he would have been quite pleased, because someone has captured his prediciment, showing other exactly what happened, giving him a cry of death that will last hundreds of years. i dont think we could fathom the number of people who suffered a similar fate - yet had no chance to scream so loudly."
i mentioned the above becuase i could see some jackass deciding that this photo is unsuitable for children, it most certainly is not, in fact - i think it is incredibly important that we are faced (as humans) with our less desirable side as often as possible (not excessivly, but).
there seems to be a general feeling amongst people, that violence on tv is bad for children, because it desensitizes them, making them 'immune' to violence, or giving them the impression that violence is 'ok'. And certainly there are topics/subjects/images that should be viewed with adults present, or perhaps not until they are older (i wasnt allowed to watch r rated movies until i was 16, and this was controled by my *parents*). i bring this up because i feel that the opposite is true - that sheltering people from reality will prevent them from being able to handle it when they come in contact with it. this seems to be true with alchohol, sex, violence,.. and i think it is true for hate.
-voudras
I read your article from 98', and its a good piece - but i must say that i cant stand when people say 'skin head' meaning 'nazi'. this meshed definition has created this wierd 'bald == nazi' stereotype, and from what i gather - this is getting more and more dominant.
people, i urge you to use 'nazi' instead of skin head - i have been thought of as a nazi because of my appearence (bald), people assuming this upsets me a great deal.
yes, i realize that there are whole books dedicated to the stereotypes of races != caucasian, but i dont think i've even seen anyone point out that WHITE BALD MALES IN THIER EARLY 20s THAT WEAR BLACK DOES NOT MEAN NAZI
I guess this just falls under the same category as any other censorship. Still the idea of Napster was to permit artists to get their music out there. Just because some (or many, regardless) people may not like the messages does not mean that others should be stripped of the right to listen to it. Filtering or censoring should be done by the end user. Not by the provider so that there is no option. It would be sad if what ended Napster was not paid for file-sharing but instead a completely destroyed ideology of free peer-peer transfer.
.--bagel--.---------------.
| aim: | bagel is back |
| icq: | 158450 |
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
>> It's not censorship unless it comes from a >> government agency People everywhere have a serious problem understanding when 'free speech' applies. I remember back in the bbs days people crying when the sysop deleted 'nasty words', phrases or entire posts. They yelled 'censorship' and 'free speech violation'. Just as you have the right to tell somebody not to use nasty words in your house, /. has the right to change the rules and begin editing 'your' posts, the Boy Scouts can fire gay scout masters, and Napster has the right to remove _any_ music for _any_ reason.
If you dont like it, you have the right to remove any software from your computer that promotes the suppression of free speech.
The truth is its the same old story, but what I don't get is.. why Nazis this time instead of Two Live Crew?
> I don't believe in censorship, nor do I believe
> that Napster or BMG have the right to censor any
> form of speech.
How is this censorship? People have debated this on Slashdot before, I believe. It's not censorship unless it comes from a government agency, merely because a business has such a limited control over you. At least, not in the sense most people here seem to take it; as if "the man" is stomping on your rights to have access to something you want.
Can't find it on Napster? Go look for a band's website. They don't have one? Go to music stores that carry a lot of underground labels. Failing that, go visit their shows.
If you object to the content a business makes available, or doesn't make available, it's really, really simple to fix: don't do business with them. Sure, Napster is a great tool, but they don't exactly hold a monopoly over the mp3 market. You have other channels of availability.
They have just as much a right to not give you something as you have a right to possess something.
I believe that the vast majority of people agree with the sentiment that people and their 'dignity' should be protected... its just a question of, "Is this the best way to do it?" I personally am concerned that the very thing that was made to protect, as a result of the actions of a group of monsters, will in time become the very tool of destruction for those it is supposed to protect.
Here in the US, our founding fathers saw this. They realized that good intentions are the beginning not the end, and that it takes "Eternal Vigilance" to ensure Liberty and Freedom. Of course, many here have chosen to forget that, but reality does not change itself just becuase we wish it to.
One other thing:
I agree that the US if VERY hypocritical about many things... we have become the country that every one loves to hate. However, to clarify... people here are confused to what Liberal and Conservative means. Lately, more censorship has been wrought by 'liberals', but you are correct if you point at that and say that is a "conservative" ideology. Conservatives regulate social, and Liberals regulate economic... at least that is the technical way to 'define' them. Now, that is really muddy, and most don't realize that they all are mixed together. They ALL wish to control you, your thoughts, and your actions. They just differ in the excuses they give, but are all hypocrits.</soapbox>
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
gosh your political analysis is truly deep
.oO0Oo.
I bow down at your insight
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It is sort of ironic that Nazis are again affecting music, as their regime in Germany did a lot of damage to classical music. Eg Jewish composers fled (Schumann?) and even some of the existing stuff lost its appeal after it was played while they were exterminating people etc.
--
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Godwin's law applies only when the Nazi reference is metaphorical (for example, he's a Nazi or the simile he's like a Nazi), not when National Socialist parties are the topic under discussion. Applying Godwin's Law whenever Nazis are brought up as a legitimate topic (and not as a strawman, etc.) is not in accordance with the spirit of the rule.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
From Bertelsmann's web site:
Does anyone know anything about this company's history during the Nazi era in Germany?
Hitler - with his minority of the popular vote in Germany would have never been able to maintain power without the support and cooperation of German business. Hitler's Germany tried to slaughter every jew and gypsy in Europe and started a world war that enveloped all of Europe, most of Asia, and North Africa. Citizens from current and former European colonies from every corner of the world fought and died and killed. Much of France, Germany, and Holland were flattened (Rotterdam).
National Socialists brought hell to the world. They have, in the view of many, pissed away their right to freedom of speech - they have shown that speech can, in fact, be dangerous and they had been experiencing a resurgence of popularity in some parts of Europe. Europeans don't want them back and both "the mob" and "big business" have proven that they are not up to the task of keeping nazism at bay in Europe.
Against this backdrop it is up to the technocrats and politicians to pass whatever legislation they can to make it difficult for the Nazis to publicize their ideas (in the process threatening Germanys minoritys)and do the best that they can to enforce it. It is up to the Germans to decide whether or not they want this material freely available. If they don't want it banned. Germans are not shy about making their political views known and going out and voting, demonstrating (or rioting).
While Martin Niemoller's "In Germany they first came for the Communists...." quote is lovely. The world is not black and white. Different situations call for different measures. The fact is that if they had come for the National Socialists in the early days they could have saved Germany and the world a lot of trouble.
Kiddy porn is not only illegal because kids get hurt in its manufacture (if that was the case a lot of other things would be illegal). It is illegal because it is a "thought crime" a taboo that just about everyone has decided that society can do without. Nazism has earned itself a spot next to "kiddy porn" as a "thought crime".
It has also earned it's place in Germany's national "killfile". Who are we to demand they remove it?
As you say, Wagner didn't have any choice over who listened to his music after he died. :-)
But how about Carl Orff? It's debatable whether he was a Nazi or not, but certainly his work was used as a conteporary example for German musicians. And Leni Riefenstahl's films.
If it comes to that, should we also be opposing Stalinism? No more Prokofiev, or Eisenstein films.
Grab.
Oh, yes it is! It's about whenever the word "Nazi" is used and you don't like it. Perhaps the argument hits too close to home. Mike made up the "law" to shut down conversations that weren't going his way.
Plain and simple. I know, I was there. He did it on my hardware!
So, the original poster correctly made fun of Godwin's Law, at least in its original spirit if not its modern whitewashed interpretation.
-Todd
That sums it all up in one sentence. Napster's usage didn't triple until the bans started popping up. So, to those of you that hadn't discovered Napster until Metallica and Dr. Dre brought it to your attention, thank them. Their idiotic lawsuits have brought forth a new movement conceived in unity and dedicated to the proposition that all music is created equal. For goodness sakes - it's SOUND. Everyone makes SOUND. To some super-intellegent being monitoring our planet this music we make is nothing more than a really hideous sound. So why the hell is it being copyrighted? And why the hell are we allowing people to make a living off of it for their entire lives when they only do it for a few years.
A tangent, I know, but I believe that far too many artists make a living off of lawsuits and such against those that are supposedly robbing them of the money they so rightfully deserve. There are two ineherent problems here. (1) They are contributing to the idea that our world revolves around money. (that's just sad) (2) They're claiming they deserve money that they would only deserve if they got off of their asses and worked for it. NEWSFLASH: Being a celebrity does not entitle you to a good sized check the rest of your life. Working for it does. If you want to reap the benefits of the system, you've got to be a worker for that system. There are the cheaters, of course, but they should be shot.
there are a couple of differences here. The first is that Napster is a (presumably) cooperative entity whereas I wouldn't think the mob is. The second is that it is in Napster/BMG's best interest to work with the authorities and not piss them off whereas gangsters could normally care less or just not want to be noticed.
To be honest, I don't feel that this particular issue is that "far out there". Sure, here in the states it's anthema (well, at least until congress gets involved) to even hear of this but in Germany this is clearly not the situation. This is just another example of an international company (by design or not) having to be sensitive to local interests. In Germany, this is a particularly sensitive subject and Napster/BMG should, to the extent they can, be sensitive about it. Similar to McDonalds renaming menus in foreign countries to suit local tastes but with a far blacker background.
And all black metal. 99% of metal actually. Bon Jovi might survive, but he's hardly a metal artist.
Considering the fuss over Marilyn Manson, I'd hate to see what would happen if Cradle Of Filth was better known.
-- And let there be light... so he fluffed the light spell
Personally, I feel the responsibility lies within each individual to censor the content that surrounds oneself. I don't like pro-nazi bands... no more than I like gangster rap... or modern country, but they ALL have the right to their freedom of speech and expression. Just because I don't like something or I find something offensive doesn't mean that it should be censored.
As a practicing Roman Catholic, I found Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" offensive towards my beliefs, but I would never have wanted him censored.
Censorship is a form of oppression... like nazism.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Can you say fuck on American public TV?
Is censorware forced onto schools and libraries in Europe?
Do we have stupid laws like the DMCA?
Guess Europe isn't so bad after all?
Your second point: 'were do you end' is a non-issue: it is not about good or bad it is about discrimination, nothing more.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
You might be opposed to this, but I think this is a good thing.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
My bad. The sarcasm tag must be broken. My point was that we cannot seem to handle the internet, so I'm skeptical as to how we can be a united world. I agree that the internet is not a simple thing, but it's nothing compared to the implications of a world government.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
The screaming people get together. Communities point at each other cry out "Get this obscene material off my internet!"
The communities band together. Countries elect officials who cry "Get this dangerous material off our internet!"
The countries finally notice each other, and realize that the internet is a global thing.
So countries start pointing at each other and screaming "You get off my internet!"
We're supposedly moving towards the one world government. We can't even deal with a simple little international network!
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Rock, Oi!, Metal, Techo, Country, Folk, they have White Music for all tastes. Two of my favorites are Boot Party Mix '99 and Six Million More. I enjoy country music too. Here are two of my country favorites by Johnny Rebel: Move Them Niggers North and Coon Town.
is for someone at Napster to actually LISTEN to every song that is transfered.
I can * name * a file anything I want.
And who determines just what is, and isn't a "Nazi song" anyway? Isn't "The Sound of Music" a "Nazi song?"
"Hitler has only got one ball?"
So, the whole thing is unenforcable, and possibly even undefinable.
Of course that never stops people, does it?
First of all I just want to say that I'm hardcore anti-nazi. And that nazi-punks make me sick. But you can't sensor art. It's the way things are. Granted what they are saying may be hard to hear, but when the day comes that one of us says somthing that is hard to hear (like copyright is bullshit hehe) I don't want to be pushed down just because people don't like it. Given the way napster is set up, it's not really going to happen. And if you don't want to hear nazi punk rock, then don't type "nazi" in the search.
-makoffee
hmm...
If you censor information by using a company that is in a different country than the one you are controlling, it greatly reduces the chance that the people you are censoring will ever even know that their government is in the censorship business.
-Attempting to limit what you see in government funded places. (for now)
-Giving the police a broader allowance to wire-tap.
-Carnivore doing more than what they say it is doing. (Everyones email?)
Sounds alot like 1984 is becomming more and more of a reality
Too bad? So, with whom should Napster be concerned? It's one thing for a government to censor me, that's wrong, it's another for a corporation to say it doesn't want to be associated with nazis, something I'd understand completely. If it offends you, however, that Napster has decided something like this, perhaps you can go somewhere that is more accepting of pure, hatred, there's nothing that precludes that!
--------
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
The Point
You
Get the message?
As Bismark put it, it's not a good idea to witness the manufacture of laws and sausage.
I bragged about my Karma at a job interview but I didn't get the job.
On what do you base the statement that it is Napster's issue? I just don't get it.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
when put in context with their treatment of scientology (which i despise, but i'd like to see crushed by disinterest not government oppression) you start to get a pattern emerging.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Adherents of free speech have long held that they must tolerate those who's speech is objectionable in order to be heard themselves.
While the present German Government is undoubtedly more benign than its regrettable predecessors it seems they share an incapability of tolerating dissenting voices.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
True, but Bertelsmann is a German company and may find itself obligated to follow the German government's laws against Nazi speech and propaganda.
IANAL, but jurisdictionally, I believe that the German government can order BMG around, and you can imagine that it flows downhill to Napster. All these international disputes arising from the free sharing of Information! I maintain that this sharing will prove to be the ultimate equalizer and must be protected in the States as elsewhere by progressive and enlightened governments. We are experiencing all the growing pains now. A world of newbies disoriented.
But I am pretty sure that the more homogeneous a people are, the less inclined are they to be tolerant of different cultures. At least they will be less inclined to allow for the easy assimilation of another culture into their own. The free information resulting from the Amazing Internet, however demands that some sort of accomodations be made for other possibly objectionable material from outside sources. Germany, being more socially homogeneous than America, has decreed that this particular brand of hate be banned. America, of course, is having its own xenophobia of sorts, but it is related to pr0n.
The only way for Germany to stop this sort of information from crossing its borders, ultimately, is to ban the Internet itself.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I'm probably not the only one to notice that your little editorial (the last link) seems to be very well reasoned and thought out. MUCH better than the usual editorials we get here from Mr. Katz, (as much as it sounds like flamebait, it's what I feel.)
;)
Plus, it's got every popular slashdot element from the last 6 months... hmm we've got Napster, censorship, nazis, history... just throw in a link to Freenet in there somewhere and you're set
The new German authoritarian craze seems to go something like this: "They banned our books and burned them so the only way we can stop them from banning and burning more of our books is to ban thier books and burn them."
I guess the Europeans will always have a need to practice some sort of Orwellian "kultur" control. Censorship is the same, whether it's enforced by "good democrats" or "evil fascists".
I fully understand and respect other country's rights to pass laws that may be in conflict with the laws of the USA.
However, their complaint goes way beyond that. They not only want us to respect their laws, but to enforce them as well. That's unacceptable.
There is a simple solution: they should simply pass laws making it illegal for their citizens to perform the actions they find objectionable.
Don't like Nazi songs on Napster? Make it illegal to download them. Don't like Nazi stuff on Yahoo? Make it illegal for the citizens to view the pages on Yahoo.
Enforcement, you say? That's their problem. If they want to make it illegal, then they should have the guts to put the responsibility on their own citizens, not on US companies. The US companies are not forcing the material down to the browser, the citizen has to request the material.
Come on, Germany and France. If you're going to pass censorship laws, then have the stomach to enforce them.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Forget the trauma's this is about control. Most goverments in Europe are socialist and they try anything to stop the right wing from becoming a credible opposition. Even moderate right wing parties are blacklisted and persecuted.
That is how far it goes.
In Holland we have no big problem with skinheads throwing molotovs through foreigners windows and beating them up on the street (we still remember the last racist murder victim who died in 1983), but people get convicted for saying things about e.g. the immigration policy which the goverment doesn't like.
And last I heard that an ISP shut down a website that railed against the policies of the transport minister, because they treatened him with prosecution.
We are on a very slippery slope here.
They say history repeats itself often but never in the same way as in the past. It is very likely that we are on the way to another fascist state but then one that is anti-nazi and anti-fascist in nature. That is why I am against censorship laws no matter how vile the people being censored are.
But that old poem "when they came for the jews...." still applies here.
Who will do something for you, when they finally come for you?
And the last time I checked communists weren't in favour of democracy as well (although they liked to call themselves democrats).
Hasn't anyone mentioned that this problem with Nazi's applies in Eastern Germany mostly? And that Eastern Germans weren't raised to be democrats for many years, during the communist goverment of Erich Honecker?
Of course the left now says that a communist system is better because it keeps fascism down. But really there is not much difference between these two systems, but they are treated differently.
"...don't bust 'till you see the whites of his eyes, the whites of his skin, the whites of his lies..."
Ice Cube "Enemy"
"Kill the white people; we gonna make them hurt; kill the white people; but buy my record first; ha, ha, ha"
Apache "Kill d'White People"
"Niggas in the church say: kill whitey all night long. . . . the white man is the devil. . . . the CRIPS and Bloods are soldiers I'm recruiting with no dispute; drive-by shooting on this white genetic mutant. . . . let's go and kill some rednecks. . . . Menace Clan ain't afraid. . . . I got the .380; the homies think I'm crazy because I shot a white baby; I said; I said; I said: kill whitey all night long. . . . a nigga dumping on your white ass; fuck this rap shit, nigga, I'm gonna blast. . . . I beat a white boy to the motherfucking ground"
Menace Clan "Kill Whitey"
is soooo much different and more peaceful than white skinhead music.
um.. I done, you can stop reading...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Here we go...
First, Napster does not "Harbour" any content. They facillitate, period. What you are proposing would lead to lawuits against any company even REMOTELY involved in the transfer of material through Napster/Gnutella/whatever.
Second, "There are laws which prohibit hate and racist content from websites, and therefore the ISPs must keep it off their servers or else face penalties" This is a pretty interesting statement. IANAL, but, the laws you refer to are not the same from country to country, and therefore are, for the most part, un-enforceable. Even if there were a U.N., or other global organization, standard (which there may be) it would not be enough. The ONLY way to resolve this issue is through education, not regulation.
um.. I done, you can stop reading...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Okay, lets assume not allowing discrimination is a "Good Thing". That means not allowing discrimination against discrimination is also a "Good Thing".
My point is that if you restrict peoples right to express their opinions you are acting in the same manner as the people you criticize.
Sometimes I don't like how people act and talk in my country - but I wouldn't suggest for a minute that we censor them for being unpopular. Doing so would only drive the problem underground to fester and grow.
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, in part, that the government can't obstruct free speech. As near as I can tell, this has no application whatsoever to Napster.
Now, if Napster were run by the U.S. government, then you'd be on to something...
-- dR.fuZZo
You know, he's right and it's true...the poem that I posted above this was originally about Nazis. It was written by a man who was imprisoned for 7 years in a Nazi war camp. You can find the original at this link. Enjoy!
It's all about the Karma Points, baybee...
Moderators: Read from the bottom up!
SIG: HUP
For those of you who haven't heard it:
On Napster, they first came for the Nazi musicians, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Nazi musician. Then they came for the Rappers, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Rapper. Then they came for the Hip-Hop listeners, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Hip-Hop listener. Then they came for the (whatever) and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a (whatever). Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up.
You can change out the words and this paragraph will apply just about anywhere. This is just a bad thing...
It's all about the Karma Points, baybee...
Moderators: Read from the bottom up!
SIG: HUP
So, what is this supposed to do? They can only block out the names of the songs.. If someone wants to, they will just change the name and they won't be able to filter it. They'd have more success if they made jaywalking illegal.. This is not only pointless, it is a waste of time and money.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
Now, I understand that it is meant funny... But I wonder if the First Amendement (Free Speech, isn't it?) hasn't become null and void due to the harsch legal system in place in American. I mean, as soon as you say something, that someone doesn't like, you can get sued and have to pay a fortune (if you lose, of course). Technically, America has the worst censorship possible: auto-censorship out of fear (for legal action).
I'm not American, and it could just be my biased view (media coverage etc...) of the American society that gives me this impression and I hope for all Americans that my view on the situation is flawed.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
America != World
US Bill of Rights != Law in rest of world
Please review Atlas, globe, map, anything. Note that there are other masses of land described on same other than USA.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Doesn't matter if it is or if it isn't. It's illegal for a company of ANY nationality to come in and distribute Nazi propaganda.
Corel had to recall all of its CorelDRAW! CDs at one point because there was swastika and Hitler clip art (in the War section) which was against German law.
The "Ooglie" doll is banned from Quebec cause it doesn't speak French.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Hmm, looking at my moderator list (whoo-hoo!), there is no entry for Incorrect (if there was, a lot of the IANA* people would have to be careful). You are not Offtopic, Flamebait, Troll, Redundant or Overrated. And besides, even if it was not written for/during the Nazi regime, I seem to remember Hitler was atleast a fan. Read this guy's page for more info on Wagner and anti-semetism.
Damn, now I can't moderate this topic. Oh well.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
I don't like hate music or the groups that put it out, but I think that the freedom of speech is an important one. other countries may not have as much as here in the Us and some may have more, but that doesn't remove the fact that everyone has the right to express themselves even if pisses off a lot of other people.
if you want "No More Hiroshimas" then I say "You First. No More Pearl Harbors."
Whether freedom of speech is a law where you live or not, a lot of people like the idea, but don't understand it.
Censorship in general isn't a good thing... it covers the past, hides the mistakes and weaknesses of mankind and leaves people unprepared for the real world.
For those of you who would like the Nazi music removed from Napster, please read the following...
(apologies for quoting a hollywood movie - The American President)
"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating, at the top of his lungs, that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours."
If you hide something you don't like, how is anyone going to know how wrong/silly/unethical it is?
The music business is coming to terms with something that law enforcement -- particularly those branches concerned with organized crime -- has been confronted with for some time: Transactions which traverse not only jurisdiction, but also sovereignties, can complicate issues of legal procedure to the point where enforced regulation is all but impossible.
crib
Please don't read my journal
Anyone can find anything offensive, god know's I find classical music offensive, and don't even get me started on country music. Ban it all!!!!
"Rock over London, Rock on Chicago.
Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions"
I am currently not obliged to divulge that information as it might compromise the agents in the field
Once we start letting our content be controlled, we ourselves become subject to control...what we can say, what we can write, paint, what we can discuss on Slashdot, who we can vote for, etc. Once the controllers have established a firm grip on all open communication, propogating the 'party line' becomes a simple task. 'Buy BMG, hate the Commie Chinese, vote Bush.' People beleive what they hear... and where are we going to hear a dissenting voice? Not in the papers, not in music, or magazines or TV. The more content control we give up, the more we're throwing away our own freedom.
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"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
you sound like you're recounting the backstory to upn's show 'freedom'. on that, there was a military coup after domestic terrorism got out of hand. special ops teams were ordered to shoot down air force one. anyone who refused was placed in secret prisons for political enemies to the new regime. the regime stopped domestic terrorism, "but it was peace without freedom. and that was a price some of us are not willing to pay." the regime completely ignores the constitution and its amendments. it is downright scary how possible this is.
maybe its because of the mixing nature of south florida, but its pretty hard to find signs of different groups based on race or nationality in my high school. most of my friends are either of indian descent (from the country of india, for you ignoramuses who refer to native americans as indians) or of hispanic descent. those of hispanic descent are from a range of countries, including cuba, columbia, argentina, brazil, chile, and peru. i myself am white and composed of the following nationalities: english, french german, irish, scottish, and i think scandinavian.
i am a white nerd, and frankly am ashamed of the myriad injustices committed by my race in the past. as i said somewhere above, most of my friends are not white, and those that are are fellow nerds.
the white race, whether europeans or americans, have conducted many of the most despicable actions in history:
- european warfare until the past century or so involved total war, including armies routinely doing the following to cities and towns near the front:
- raping the women
- looting
- pillaging
- burning the city or town
- slavery when convenient
- unfair displacement of native americans (i.e. stealing their land or paying them tiny sums for land that was worth much more (manhattan island was purchased for several trinkets and beads))
- the holocaust
- exploitation of any and all natural resources of this planet with no concern for the future generations (or, in the words of ian malcom from jurassic park on the creation of dinosaurs from dna (that would take it to an even higher level, mind you) "it's the rape of the natural world")
i'm not even going to start on the fact that the united states has never had a minority for a president. nor the fact that most of the politicians in office in the united states are white.my views might also have to do with the actions taken in the past my a number of the nationalities that i am descended from:
as far as my nerdiness goes, i'm a self-proclaimed nerd. i really don't care what people think of me, for i know who and what i am. i don't need the opinions of others to feel good about myself. i can only think of about 5 people whose opinions i hold high enough that their words could really hurt me, and half of them are close relatives. maybe i was harassed too much by too many people earlier in life (i.e. elementary and middle schools).
up until about world war ii, the quote "all's fair in love and war" was true, at least for war. therefore, your examples are largely irrelevant.
Now I'm confused, do nazi bands have powerful conquering armies and concentration camps, or are thay just a bunch of powerless losers that shave their heads and pretend to have some affiliation with Hitler?. Oh wait, I see the danger, didn't the whole Third Reich start as a metal band?
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
So what ?
Are we going to take turns who's on top or maybe we should try to actually abide by our current laws which prohibit different treatment based on race ( that goes for Affirmative Actions as well)
Isn't Napster by any chance American company ?
Do you extend your judgment to all these minority racial groups as well ?
Nice try.
However, Jews do not whine and as far as I know they are doing pretty well _despite"_ racism and bigotry they were subjected for couple of hunder years.
Any lessons here for AA ?
Napster can do, or attempt to do with their servers whatever they want. If you have a problem, you'll have to contact them.
Aside from that, some people are saying theres a double standard when it comes to banning certain types of music. There are resons why people dont ban rap music. First, and most importantly, is that it generates money. Second, gangsta rap music is not the cause of the violence that they are connected with. Of course the record companies tried to associate them with violence to sell copies. If you think that albums or music videos cause problems, I belive you are mistaken. The real cause is what it has been for a very long time, poor education and poverty. Just like the real case of racial violence are not musicians.
Back to the napster case. It would be highly noble of them to stand up and say "no, we wont censor our users", but you have to try to look at it from their point of view. They asked themselves, "what is the best thing to do for US?" Its not easy to do the right thing.
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Sounds like someone's trying to get their case for shutting down Napster on the evening news.
never offensive, always mild
Today: Fortune 500 turns to Warez
They're a business. It's not censorship if they decide they don't want to carry (or "sell") some given item. We as consumers have a right to not associate with that business that we find operates in a means detrimental to free speech.
Put your money where your mouth is. This is the reason I won't shop at Walmart. They've made a business decision not to carry CDs with "parental advisory" stickers on them (which is completely hypocritical since they have no problem selling "R-rated" movies), so I've made a consumer decision not to give them my money.
There are plenty of places online to buy music that some people find "offensive", and until such music is outlawed (which WOULD be censorship), there will always be such places. If there is demand, someone somewhere will meet those demands.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Actually, the answers would be: "They have the responsibility to do what they think is right," "Can they build a Nazi music detector? No. Can they filter certain files i.e. "stop this" in the sense any reasonable person would recognize? Of course." and "wherever they want."
On the plus side, one sensible thought in three represents an all-time high for Your Rights Online. And kudos to Jamie for ordering the commas and quotation marks correctly! Could you give Rob some pointers on its versus it's?
Umm, how about "If ya don't want to listen to Nazi music, don't download any Nazi music" - makes sense to me. Parents, if your kids want to download Nazi music, you've probably got bigger things to worry about then what music they listen to. American History X anyone?
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Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well, here I am.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Forgetting the legal issues, ethically, it's better to let the "offensive" material be. After all, it's the Nazi's of the world who think it's ok to censor, removing their material only validates their pro-censorship position.
My other sig is extremely clever...
In any event, who really cares what Napster tries to do? It's just one inferior product without much competition, not because the competition sucks, but because it doesn't exist. There are far too many shortcomings there already; add a monthly charge and censorware in the middle, and Gnutella almost looks good.
What we need here is a good mp3 sharing/playing system that's open-source, cross-platform, and, most importantly, not the ugly scion of the Golden Boys of MP3 (Fanning, Frankel). I've had enough of hearing that WinAmp or Napster are anything other than products with bad competition.
Mr. Sub
The point is that the NAZI party in Germany did some bad things, let's face it some very bad things...People must never be allowed to forget what this kind of extremism can incite people to do. This kind of stuff should be given the widest possible viewing on the grounds that it will show how full of shit assholes like this are.
Elgon
Well, my point of view is that people just need an enemy. Romans were happy as long as they were fighting Carthago. When they finally destroyed it, they had no more enemies, became lazy and decadent bastards and started to rot from the inside.
Hmm, I fear for the United States now that the Communist threat has stopped! Hey, at least we still have Saddam.
I don't see why Germany would ban "Mein Kampf". I mean it's a part of history. Just because it is a racist book doesn't mean EVERYBODY will start goose stepping to Wagner! Neo-Nazi's will be rascist whether they have the book or not so I see their laws as totally Draconian!
History, and what comprises history, should never be supressed no matter how horrible or guilt inducing it may be to recall.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
If napster does this they are shooting themselves in the foot. Their entire legal stratagey rides on the fact that they can't control content.
It seems to me that this whole subject is full of irony in the sense that one of Napster's central legal defenses to the music industry is that it cannot identify copyrighted music. How would that be any different from identifing Nazi music? Forget any deep philosophic reasons for not doing this--Napster won't do it because it will demonstrate RIAA is right.
Just thought that I would give you all the proper quote that you're paraphrasing:
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
Voltaire.
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---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
I disagree with the first/second paragraph which cliams that if Nazi songs would be removed, the next would be Rap. How can you compare racist lyrics to 'violent' lyrics like 'fu** ya nigga'..
That's a hell of a different.
What the heck are you talking about.. Does the lyrics of death metal hurt anybody ? It's just offensive and that's all. Nazis lyrics are _RACIST_... don't you all see the difference ??
Better cancel all death metal, then...
The entire Gortician philosophy is 'If we don't offend you, there's something wrong with you."
Get my free Hitchhiker's Guide Tribute Novella:
or i'm fairly sure it does anyway. I'm not a german lawyer, but BMG is a german company, and germany has many many anti-nazi laws in all shape and form (they even removed an arrangement of trees that resembled a swastika from the air in a forest a few weeks ago).. to stay on the german govt's good side this is something they can request napster to do. Though I believe they'd be hard pressed to enforce something like this through technical means...
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Hey, if you can somehow get rid of the gangsta rap, that's all right with me!
Steve Reich makes very interesting minimal music. :(
;)
Long live Napster, but if I was looking for 'Reich' (should do the trick i thought) Napster also offered me several speeches from different nazi's. Not really the stuff I was looking for
Oh, if you're interested in minimal music, also try Stockhausen and Glass
Privacy is terrorism.
It's not Napster's responsibility to regulate music based on content. Who are you gonna allow to tell you what's OK to listen to and what's not OK to listen to? Are you gonna make the decision as to what someone else should not be able to get via Napster? Do you propose setting up a hotline to report lyrics that offend you personally? Besides the freedom issues posed by these questions, any of these scenarios will act to turn Napster into Blandster (more than it is already), and an "illegal" alternative (like the original) will materialize to serve people who prefer to be individuals. I'd rather be offended on a regular basis than have all the edges cut off.
Some things are so intrinsically evil, they can't be used even as a protest.
They shouldn't have to regulate it... In AMERICA you can and always will be able to buy Pink Floyd Dammit! It's time the rest of the world comes to terms with AMERICAS laws -OR-... no internet for you! :P
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -Gilmore
I don't think it's a problem. People who want Nazi art can always find it somewhere else once Napster succumbs completely.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
I think people who request outrageous things ("Someone might find this offensive! We better get rid of it!") should be permanently banned from the Internet.
Perhaps they should, just to be on the "safe side", put a warning that, in nicer words, says "To the disappointment of some, you have not died and gone to heaven. Therefore, please understand that, by using our service, you may encounter offensive content. If you are one of the idiots who expects the Internet to be maintained to the likings of the Pope, you are prohibited from accessing our service."
(BTW, in case it comes up... I am *not* making fun of the Pope or anything of that nature.)
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suwain_2
That's the problem. This whole free speech thing has gone too far in the wrong direction. Censorship is bad, when it is by the goverment. When a person, or company, decides to censor themselves is should be their right. Who are you to tell BMG what they should allow transported over Napster. Do I agree that the German goverment should be allowed to tell BMG what to allow? NO. That is the problem; BMG is NOT. Get it straight. It seems that /.'ers are constantly looking to blame the US goverment or big corporations: in this case it is the German goverment and that is who the outcry should be against.
they'll never be able to regulate it. It's like how ISPs are responisble for the content in the websites they host. They in turn pass responsibility to their clients, and if inappropriate material is found, their accounts are revoked. The same should be said for Napster. It's just a matter of finding the inappropriate content...
But then, I think about the cultural differences. You (Americans) should try to see these differences, too. You are NOT setting the world standarts in everything.
It's true, freedom of speach is important, no matter where you are and what your opinion is.
But, first of all, the distribution of nazi propaganda is illegal in Germany, and Bertelsmann is a german company and is simply breaking german laws when they permit nazi propaganda on Napster.
Second, not all Germans were Nazis, quite a number of them had to suffer under the Nazis as well, and are still living in Germany. I don't even want to imagine how someone who survived a KZ must feel if he or she passes an open window and some dumb nazi skinhead is loudly playing the Horst Wessel Lied inside. Or songs that glorify the nazis, call for another nazi revolution or simply tell people to kill jews or foreigners. That's a poblem that is specific for Germany and the formerly nazi occupied parts of Europe.
Another thing I should mention is that one of the major goals of the german constitution is stability of the democracy. Germany had a VERY liberal constitution in the Weimar Republic which led to the Third Reich in less than 20 years. Bearing that in mind a number of defence mechanisms were build in the new one. Fighting anti democratic movements while they are small is part of it. Try to see some historical backgrounds.
Generally spoken, people in Europe are not more or less free in what they say and do than in America. They just have different freedoms.
People are not offended by certain words on TV, and ads are not banned for nudity. In Germany, beer is legal when you're 16, in the Netherlands and Switzerland you are free to buy marijuana and no european country has capital punishment. You can often smoke in public places! Everybody has health care and if you can't find a job the government will pay for your living. You don't have to pay for universities, and if your parents can't support you financially (housing, food, clothes) than the government will do that. You can drink in public.
But you are not allowed to spread anti democratic propaganda in some European countries.
I live in Europe and can't think of any. Yugoslavia was the last european country with a real socialist government. And they just elected a new one.
We have are highly controversal discussion here in Germany about blacklisting the NPD (National 'Democratic' Party). It's the first time since the 50s, and the process is very hard to do, takes long and is of uncertain outcome.
And the NPD is not moderate right wing, but very extreme. Plus, and that makes the process possible, they fail to meet one of the riquironments for germany parties, being democraticly organised.
You just don't know what you are talking about.
But seriously, you're right, it's illegal because of all those swastikas and (that might surprise you) because you shoot people in the game. That's why you shoot monsters in so many games.
In some countries shooting people is considered not politically correct.
Who the hell are we to tell them what they can or can not censor. If you dont like it, dont use the service. How is this even an Issue? It's not like its about to be a law passed by congress. It's a company and as far as Im concerned they can regulate what they want and we dont have the right to say otherwise. Isnt it just as wrong for us to mandate that they MUST carry Nazi Music? Would anyone here be throwing a fit if they banned backstreet boys or Nsync songs? Hey, at least those have some value to them as opposed to NAZI oriented music
So any Rap song that rants about 'whitey' should be banned, you say? What about 'progressive' songs from the 60's that rail against 'the Rich'? Doesn't that promote discrimination against society's more successful element? They should be banned as well?
You're right I'm opposed to this, it's not a good thing.
Hay thar.
Is censorware forced onto schools and libraries in Europe?
You can't even download 'Wolfenstein 3D' in Germany.
Hay thar.
Now that Napster has sold out, everyone ought to get Napigator and go onto all the other Napster-compatible servers that exist. They won't have any censorship, and we'll probably all have to switch anyway when BMG decides the best way to try and give us a good corporate screwing....
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Um. I think you'd have to read Germany's Constitution in order to determine whether something was written about this.
I hereby invoke Godwin's Law.
Barney Will be banned from Napster - His "Love" songs will be conisdered sexually explicit, censory, here we come.
The dilemma is that we're seeing a partnership of two companies who's philosophies differ greatly. BMG wants control where Napster advocates freedom. It starts with Nazi music, but how far will it go?
I'm sure the Nazi's were censoring lots of stuff.
Censorship is a slipperly slope that I don't want to slide down.
it doesn't matter what it is, it would still fall under the freedom of speech category. let's not be hypocrites people. We all want freedom of speech, and unfortunately, not everyone has to say something good.
It is perfectly legal for BMG to ban 'Nazi' music. People arguing for First Amendment rights in this case are mistaken for what the First Amendment says. It DOES say that the GOVERMENT cannot dicriminate against unpopular speech, but it DOES NOT say that PRIVATE COMPANIES cannot discriminate.
First I would like to know what exactly is ment by "NAZI" music? All White Separatist music is not National Socialist in nature nor are all White Nationalist bands NS. The fact of the matter is NAZI music could become a rather large group of music quite quickly. For instance, would all WW2 German Marches be banned? How about Wagner? He wrote a book on the influence of Jews on the French music scene of his time and his tone toward the jews is anything but kind. Which is why his music was so widly used during the Third Reich. Or are they going to define it as music with violence as a message? While a large share of White Nationalist, so called "NAZI music," would not be in such a catogery, viturally all that black gansta rap "music" would have to be banned. Imagine the outcry of racism if they wanted to ban black music for its terrible content. Free Speech sould be allowed not only on Napster but on every other forum as well. If you don't want to listen to "NAZI" music then don't download it, but why should your views stop individuals that do want to listen to it doing so?