B'nai Brith Pushes for Web Regulation

Baldrson writes: "Wired magazine reports that in late August, B'nai Brith Canada tried to get the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to pay attention to posts on the Islam Way weblog that solicited for volunteers to join Ossama bin Laden. According to the story: "...after media reports have suggested that Montreal and Halifax may have been meeting points for a number of the terrorists involved in the attack, B'nai Brith Canada is stepping up its efforts to get legislation passed to ban such Web activity.""

Comments

Bad People

[MartyJG]

As somebody wisely said on this list at KeepersOfLists.org, 'Bad People Use the Internet for Stuff'. Bad People are always going to use the internet, the same as Bad People use cars, the telephone, postal service and even airplanes - but whatever regulations you introduce, it's always going to mean extra hassle for the honest people, while the Bad People just find some way round it.

Don't ban it - encourage it!

[Happy Monkey]

...weblog that solicited for volunteers to join Ossama bin Laden. ... B'nai Brith Canada is stepping up its efforts to get legislation passed to ban such Web activity.

Don't ban such activity! Encourage it, and then let the Feds also participate and infiltrate the groups, as they currently do with pedophile rings. A free and open society does not always have to hamper the abilities of the police. Sometimes it fosters an environment where it's easier for the authorities to check things out.

Re:Don't ban it - encourage it!

[WNight]

Islam, like all religions, seeks to push something distasteful and potentially dangerous on children too young to know any better.

Sounds in many ways like pedophilia...

Religion should be dealt with like sex, perfectly allowable for anyone to do anything they want, as long as it is consented to by all participants, and those participants are over the age of minority.

Re:Don't ban it - encourage it!

[Saeger]

(not-a-flame)

You're both an atheist and an vegan you say? So, you deny the possible, however unlikely, existence of God(s), rather than choose the more logically neutral position of agnosticism; and you deny yourself the tender, juicy, delicious steaks that your canine teeth are in fact adapted for (evolutionary neutral) -- that's fine, more meat for us "belly-size-economizers". :-)

Anyway, more to the point, if there's one thing us humans like to do above all else, it's imposing our self-righteous will on others, especially our children.

The difference here is that our government is set up to NOT allow it to impose much of its will on free people (parents), but as parents are often fond of saying to their kids, "as long as you're living under my roof this is NOT a democracy!"

...as long as you're not raising, say, assassins...have at it! But when your kid rejects your attempt at a vegan indoctrination... don't be a dicktator. :)

Re:Don't ban it - encourage it!

[WNight]

It's not flamebait, it's an opinion. Way to call for censorship.

"You can't prevent parents from talking to their kids about religion."

I didn't claim to be able to.

But the fact that it's impossible to totally stop pedophila and child abuse doesn't mean we don't try.

"So I can see that a religious parent might feel angry if they were forced to bring up their child an atheist or an agnostic."

Yup. And I'm sure a molestor would be upset that he couldn't indulge.

As an aside, you don't "bring a child up athiest", you simply don't bring them up religious and they end up athiest. Athiesm isn't a codified set of beliefs, it's the freedom from religion.

"To people with strong views on religion, there are no 'neutral' positions."

True, but why are the views of an adult more important that the safety of a child?

Fruitless

[eXtro]

There's a lot of things that are posted on the web which are objectionable, depending on your definition of objectionable. There are many things said in small groups of people that are objectionable. There are things said among large groups of people that are objectionable.

Trying to censor a viewpoint, no matter how wrong the view point is, can not possibly work. If you manage to censor the web (nearly impossible - just go off and start a GeoCities page or my.yahoo page, then another and then another and...) you only move the hateful speech someplace else. Hate didn't originate with the world wide web, its been around for a very long time. It's always managed to find a forum and it always will.

You're better off spending the funds that would be wasted on censorship on free books for libraries (especially grade school and high school libraries) in order to mold peoples brains into being more accepting of others.

I can't believe...

[MartinG]

.. that there are still people around these days who are stupid enough to believe that this kind of regulation can do any good at all. How many times do they need to be proven wrong, and how often do we need our rights reducing before these stupid (but well intending although angry) people realise they are WRONG?

I fear they will not stop until we reach orwellian levels of monitoring, banning and regulation.

I find it ironic that the US are moving more towards stopping technologies that are evil, (which incidentally is a complete nonsense in itself,) yet none of us would like to live under (for example) the rule of the Taleban. Look again at the Tabeban - all they do is ban, monitor and control things they think are "evil" - just the knod of action we are talking about here.

The world needs to learn that people are good and bad. "Things" are indifferent. Banning or restricting "things" simply hides bad people from view. An interesting side effect that governments find useful from that is that it increases temporarily the perception of safety.
4

CSIS != CISC

[BMazurek]

The Slashbox links to the CISC (Criminal Intelligence Service Canada), but the article text refers to CSIS (Canada Security Intelligence Service). Here is the real CSIS site.

IslamWay.com = Terrorism ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: I tried to register but I always failed !

Email me if you want : wael@islamway.com

Hello,

I read your post on SlashDot and I'd like for the sake of truth to clarify things to you ..

Bna'i Brith attack on IslamWay.com was very strange, as a member and volunteer of IslamWay.com team I assure that the main objective of this website is teaching people about Islam, and we have nothing to do with politics.

Then what's the story of terrorism ?!

In IslamWay.com discussion board we've more than 4000 Member and at the time of the media attack there was more than 28,000 posts!! Bnai Brith didn't only take one of the posts but even took a statement out of context to proove that IslamWay.com is a terrorist website !

Although a service provider is not responsable for what third parties write in their website, all the media started to attack IslamWay.com ( see : http://www.islamway.com/NYPost.htm )

Was it really Invitation to kill others ?

The discussion post was between two people who were fighting each others by words, one called the other one that you are a hypocrite, so the other one was very angry so he told him -I'm just giving the meaning- : Let's see who is the hypocrite, Come with me to Afghanistan and let's train ourselves there .. so the person meant that army excersises will be a way to proove who is the coward and who is the brave !!

Which is a proof that this person is a sick person or at least a one with a child mind !

The people who attacked IslamWay.com based on the Discussion Board post didn't clarify that it was mentioned in the discussion board, and they just said a post on IslamWay.com ..

They didn't mention it's a fight between two people but they mentioned that it's an invitation !

My message to the people who read the fake stories about IslamWay.com to go and visit it, and judge by your self.
http://english.islamway.com

Thanks,

Wael

Directly from the IslamWay response...

[sammy baby]

The entire story is based upon a posting by a private individual on Islamway's English language discussion board, in the context of an ongoing dialogue between two individuals. There are over 28,000 postings on the discussion board, with more than 34,000 visitors to the page everyday, and over 4,000 active members. Islamway is in no way responsible for the content of postings by private individuals, anymore than CNN.com or Yahoo! are responsible for the postings found on the discussion boards on their sites...A reporter from an Ottawa television station conveyed to Islamway staff that the Canadian authorities have dismissed the issue as baseless, and B'nai B'rith has refused any further comment.

- IslamWay.com's response

So first, everyone relax. It wasn't like the owner of this site was actively recruiting.

Second, it sounds like the Canadian government isn't interested in pursuing the issue, which is a relief.

And third, I don't see anyone pulling for net regulation when assholes in our own country start shouting, "Nuke them sand-niggers back into the stone age! I'm gonna get me one tonight!"

As a brief side note: I'd like to remind everyone that the people of Afghanistan live in terror of the Taliban. Please think of the ways they're suffering before blindly calling for their annihilation.

Re:That's typically usual

[SuiteSisterMary]

I have no comment either way about most of what you say, but I'll point out that you're right in one respect. During World War 2, the Japanese killed far more Chinese than the Nazis ever did Jews. Yet nobody ever seems to mention that.