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Stupid Censorship, Stupid Security
The
2003 Jefferson Muzzle
"winners" are out. This year's crop starts with John Ashcroft and the U.S. Congress, and works its way down through the school board that voted to put Harry Potter on the restricted shelf. Innovation in censorship deserves recognition, read and enjoy. And in other stupid news,
the winners of the
Stupid Security Competition
have been announced. I like that I'm being protected from tea. It makes me feel safe.
the problem with censoring data is that - if you aim to remove access to offending data - there is no end to it. there will always be people who get offended at anything.
for example the harry potter book burning event was just plain stupid. it is just a kids story (good though) and if your belief system is so fragile that you have to protect it by removing access to all data that you find not suitable, you have a problem.
in my experience if people prevent other people asking questions, than that means that that you are not too sure about your answers to those questions.
int.
One of my favorite saying is "Information is not bad, it is the is the holding of information that is bad". The idea that you are protecting a child from harm it unfounded. The only reason Censorship is around is cuz of Right Wing, conservatives are afraid of change. God forbid a child read a book about a kid who can make things float. Censorship is really about control, someone had decided that an idea should not be shared with other people and thus they take it upon them selves to control that idea. An idea could be anything, a book, a word, a movie, etc,. I am a firm believer that Censorship in any form is bad and hinders creativity. The DMCA is one of the biggest acts of Censorship I've ever seen. "NOPE! This here DMCA cays you can't publish that report about anti-copy protection!" common guys, step out of the box for a sec and look at with relevance Censorship has. and i'll tell you, it has none
from the Ashcroft article:
"Allowing $8,000 in tax dollars to be spent on drapes to conceal two semi-nude statues that often appeared behind the attorney general during press conferences in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice. Ironically, the two statues represent "The Spirit of Justice" and "The Majesty of Law."
Ironic indeed, in fact most telling.
Ashcroft in his post 9/11 reign of the DOJ has done more to hide the doings of the DOJ and execution of it's commandments from the public than any other Attorney General in our nations history.
Being that he is the mind behind "secret search warrants", "secret evidence" and "secret imprisonment", it is quite fitting that he display this by making the representitive figures of his office "secret" as well.
Is there some kind of a Moore's law for Censorship? Something like "For every disgusting act of censorship, in 12 to 18 months there will be one twice as disgusting?"
some other thoughts:
People who are easily offended deserve to be... a lot!
The real war against liberty for all.
Do the rest of us a favor who do not see an FBI agent around every corner, stop calling every administrative attempt to restrict a display of objectional art to children censorship.
Definition of censor. The FBI is hardly needed to meet the definition. Also, if that "administrative attempt" is at a public school where children are - by law - required to spend about 1/4 to 1/2 their waking time (during the school year) then they deserve every constitutional protection. Yes, yes, private schools exist. In practice, only so many people can afford that option. Those required to pay for and utilize the public school system have every right to oppose any "administrative attempt".
Whether this organization agrees with it or not parents and citizens have a right to restict objectional art from being displayed using publicly funded means, every bit as much as the artists have in producing then getting publishers to distribute and/or display their garbage.
No, that's exactly what censorship is .. you DON'T have the right to restrict things you object to. And you DO have the right to produce and put out "garbage".
If people have a "right" to not be offended, then how can you also claim a right of free speech?
Substitute for Harry Potter: The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher In The Rye, Brave New World, or The Lord Of The Rings. All beloved books that have been censored at times. The story repeats itself because people continue to hold to belief systems that demand blind, ignorant devotion. Faith is fine, devotion is fine. But not blindly. Not without thought.
barzelay.net
My school's filter has blocked the Muzzle Awards under the category of "Pornographic and Recreational Nudity"! -Joe
did anyone else notice that there were a disproportionate number of awards going to institutions of learning? namely, school districts including middle schools and high schools?
i don't know about anyone else, but this is a scary proposition for me. schools trying to prohibit the dissemination of information about different cultures and schools of thought speaks volumes about the types of people that are educating our young people. if i let my kids in the future go through a given school system, i want availble to them a variety of vantage points, not just the "right one" as prescribed by the administration.
Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!
A rant about it
The RAVE act basically means, if there are any drugs on your property, no matter whether they belong to someone else or whether you knew about it, are your responsibility, and your property may be forfeit and you can be subject to a ludicrous fine.
The full text of the law.
A.C. for obvious reasons.
In 2001 I was interning as a system/network administrator for a publishing house (hint: textbooks). It was (alas) a mostly NT shop for the typists, editors, etc. "grunt workers." The graphics and design teams were mostly using Macs. We had an NT box with 5 30 gig drives serving as a file server.
One of the C-level pointy hairs must have logged into the file server one day and realized that most of the space was used up. He sent a memo to our department (Technical Operations) saying how he found a large number of TIF, EPS, and PSD files on the drives taking up "inordinate amounts" of space and that they need to be deleted immediately. I kid you not. Dunno whether he thought they were horrific pirate music files or what, but they were taking up space so by god they needed to go.
My manager printed out a copy of the memo, handed it to me, smiling, and said "write a batch file to do what he wants." I did. Ten minutes later, the fileserver had about 80 gigs more storage space.
All of us on the floor laughed our asses off most of the day.
The night shift spent most of their time restoring backups (fortunately most of the artsy folks had their own backups as well) cursing us for carring out the order.
The C-level never contacted TechOps again.