Slashdot Mirror
Academics Take On Government Net Censorship
Anonymous Brave Guy writes "There's an interesting article from the BBC today about a group of academics at the University of Toronto who are working to investigate and break down government-imposed censorship of the Internet. Are they defending human rights, or simply trying to impose their own beliefs on people from other cultures? Incidentally, one of their people was responsible for the previous Slashdot discussion of 'five fundamental problems with open source'."
Why haven't I seen any comments about using Freenet for this yet? Where's Ian hiding today?
the more you try and control it the more behind your back methods will be created.
Are they defending human rights, or simply trying to impose their own beliefs on people from other cultures?
Is there really a difference between the two? Fundamentally, the acknowledgement of "human rights" is a system of belief, born out of our culture. Certainly there have been plenty of cultures which have not accepted any of the principles which we want to "defend" today.
On some level, the concept of "human rights" is a claim that our cultural beliefs are better, and more right, then those that do not agree with them.
Since there is no absolute source of right and wrong in the universe, our own beliefs are the best we've got. And there are certain things that we believe so strongly, that we are willing to impose them on others. What gives us the right to do this? That we are stronger. Nothing else.
We ought to see this for what it is, and stop feeling bad about it.
And in other news today, the Government announced that funding for the University of Toronto had been cut by 50%. A source that would not be identified believes that this is reliation for an effort by academics to reduce censorship of the internet.
An official spokesman at the Education Department could not be reached for comment.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
"Are they defending human rights, or simply trying to impose their own beliefs on people from other cultures?" Censorship is imposing your values on others, stopping censorship is not. Stopping people hiding information does not force them to have your values.
I disagree. If what Saudi citizens find out about other places via the Internet causes them to reject their Islamic culture and heritage, then perhaps it's a culture and heritage not worth preserving in the first place.
There are plenty of countries that are online, for the most part uncensored, and are able to maintain their culture. Next lame attempt at an argument, please?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
University of Toronto? Interesting, considering the "Canadian Content"-based censorship laws in Canada, where foreign stations are banned (censored) due to lack of "Canadian Content".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Why is there no mention of peekabooty? it seems like a really good project
When I worked at GTE the company got the contract to lay the fiber optic cable around the border of China and put in the network centers that setup a ring around China. Total control of all the traffic in and out of the country, or so they hoped. A career limiting move came when I wrote Chuck Lee, CEO of GTE, and said we were helping the same Communist government that gave us Tianamen Square and would continue to repress the Chinese people using this technology. But Bean Counters only care about profit and damn the people that get get screwed over in the process.
As a side note, I knew a lad working near me from China who had been at Tianamen Square the day before and then the day after the massacre happened. When he saw what the army had done to their own people he went home, packed and left for Hong Kong and then to the US.
Censorship is only one way the Communists will use to stay in power and shooting another bunch of college kids can happen again.
You are risking bringing the wrath of the Linux jihadists down on you. You are indeed brave.
If this were groklaw, your post would already be deleted.
So what ?!?!
Their Govt CENSORS stuff
THEY ARE THE PEOPLE THAT PUT THE GOVERMENT IN POWER !!!
THEY HAVE THE OPTION TO CHANGE THINGS !!!!
Why dont they ? Because they value security MORE than Freedom. Why the hell should I feel bad about some Marxist regimes censorship ? If THEY cared so much en-masse THEY would do something about it. THEY obviously dont care , why should I ?
... are real of course.
What is not real is the suggestion that human liberty and freedom is culturally dependent. That is a lie used by repressive governments to justify policies that really only serve their own interests.
There have been many attempts in Western nations to repress individual rights because of the "common interest", and these rightly strike us as barbaric. No reason to apply different standards to other countries just because they are different.
However... the day I see an electorate in a "culturally different" country freely and democratically vote for a regime that restricts human rights, I'll change my mind.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
"Citizens can't just accept technology at face value."
*looks at Windows-loaded PCs on Best Buy shelf*
Ohhhhh yes they can.
The coolest voice ever.
Are these self-appointed vigilante academics. I would rather fight publicly abroad (and at home) to limit governments ability to censor. Petty vandalism is so easy to repair, and puts burdens on ISP who are not the real problem. And I wonder if there will be a liberal bias to their fight. Will gay's rights be seen as noble as gun rights? Free trade as equal of airing as anti-globalism?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/21/142239 &mode=thread&tid=122&tid=126&tid=172&tid=179&tid=1 85&tid=190
Do your homework
Silly rabbit
No it's not. If Islam was a dying thing, like say the aboriginal cultures in Australia, then perhaps there would be an argument there. But religions are always passing converts back and forth. At the moment, IIRC, Islam has some of the highest conversion rates TO it. Which means "Islamic culture" is really in very little danger of going away, and there's no need to "preserve" it.
Plus, cultures are evolving things. American, Chinese, Islamic, whoever. Compare the governments in the Middle East around 1500 to what we have today. You could easily make the arguement that getting rid of the Princes and opening the country up is REALLY preserving Islamic Culture. (preserving it from the corrupt clerics, of course) It's all just a front for cynical politicians to control their populations in the name of God. As far as I'm concerned, the Chinese have more moral justification, since they're just operating under the "It's my party..." defense.
(disclaimer: respects all religions, disrespects all hypocrits)
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
It is time that the post-modernist critique of morality come to an end. This ridiculous idea that there can be any real morality in a world where there is absolutely no accepted notion of universal right and wrong can be blamed for a lot of the world's problems today. Let's take a look.
As secularists succeed in attempting to decouple capitalism from its original protestant moral underpinning you get Enrons and Tycos, companies with no sense of duty and obligation to anyone except whoever is currently trying to pillage them. Many years ago, business executives took pride in their companies and you'd have been hard pressed to find them doing that.
This idea that there is no universal right and wrong is precisely why we have things like "genocide" in this world. While most "genocides" are nothing more than mass killings, not wholesale exterminations, they can happen with impunity because when countries intervene they care about "cultural sensitivies" rather than seeking genuine justice from a standard of transcendant morality.
Another problem with the "everybody's morality is equal because it's an opinion and nothing more" argument is that from that point you cannot condemn what you think is evil. Want to condemn someone as a NAZI, guess what you (typically leftist) fuck? You can't because whether anything you say is morally wrong is just your opinion. In mine, it can be the holiest of holy things to "be a NAZI" by your definition of NAZI (ironically most don't even know what NAZIs actually believed; never read one sentence of the Munich Manifesto).
You can draw your transcendant morality from a secular source or a religion. However if you continue to not insist that there is a universal standard you are part of the problem. When a group pulls another Rwanda with the backing of a major nation (like France did in 1994) what would be your retort to them saying "it's our culture, don't get involved?" If you believe no morality is universal than you're a hypocrite if you don't concede their point.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Every sane person, regardless of their culture, wants the right to express their own opinions and to exercise control over their own lives. Yours is just a pathetic excuse for the complicity our governments have in the oppression of those in other countries.
What I understand, freedom of expression is guaranteed in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression ; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of fronteirs."
[emphasis added]. So if there is any nation that is not a part of the United Nations, sure, imposing these restrictions on the freedom of the government of these nations would be imposing their own beliefs on these other cultures. This does not sound like what these people are doing, however. There is no excuse whatsoever for government censorship by any government who is a member of the United Nations(this means you, China, United States of America, and Canada).
Sure, one may argue that the United Nations may be unnecessary, outdated, completely irrelevent or otherwise, but as it stands today, we are obligated to fufil our part of the bargain, despite how sometimes we may disagree with it, or alternatively, decline membership to the United Nations and become a Rogue State, with none of the protections to you that The Declaration provides.
These guys sound down-right nuts, though. If a dictator is willing to kill thousands of his own people, what makes you think they won't assasinate you, if you actively mess with them? Kudos to their efforts.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
...that you haven't visited the United States.
The denial of "human rights" by the parent of your item seems to come across as an excuse to say that oppressive governments that deny rights are quite acceptible: it is "culturally OK".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Seriously, is it any surprise to anyone here that the government is involved in social engineering programs? They've always used any form necessary/available to bend our thinking into what they want their population to be, and as soon as the next far-reaching information/media service becomes available you can bet they'll be using that too.
Resistance is futile.
You won't find one because Islam is a horribly repressive religion. You want to talk women's rights in Islam? Talk about the **absence** of them. Being forced to dress head to toe in a rag because a man might get horny seeing their face is common in many countries. Honor killings of women who have been raped. Polygamy. Whatever freedom an Islamic society extends to men it doesn't to women. Not even basic rights like being able to choose what they want to wear in many countries.
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried by saying that culture doesn't determine whether freedom can be present. Cultural attitudes directly affect how one sees oneself in relation to one's fellow citizens.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
but whenever you mix political activists, social "scientists" and artists, you can virtually ensure that nothing's going to get done. Also, does anyone else find it a tad hypocritical for Canadian academics to be pursuing this effort. Canada is the most repressive developed nation in the world, from the perspective of free speech. Their citizens haven't legal access to foreign media sources, and they're subject to some of the most onerous speech restriction in the western world. -You'll notice that none of citizenlabs efforts are directed towards liberating their own people.
.. information is entropy
Why would we want to watch ads for products that aren't available in our country? It's not the ads, it's the shows. Ask anyone near the border tho uses address tricks to get United States satellite TV programming to see the channels censored off the Canadian satellite feeds.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Censorship is only one way the Communists will use to stay in power and shooting another bunch of college kids can happen again.
Sheesh. Communists staying in power. Shooting college kids. I didn't know how conflicted I was about censorship until I read your post.
The most popular US news channel is banned in Canada. I'm pretty sure that SciFi channel is also banned; there are others.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...are you talking about? http://www.freenetproject.org
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
No gauss needed, all you have to have is laws and companies harassing you for daring to receive that evil "foreign" content.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Let's say we have this little thing called "science" that enables us to approach real truth - not just culturally-relative beliefs about something we call "true." Let's say with science we begin to have an informed vision about how people can live better than the beliefs of their local culture would allow. For instance, we can teach them how to dig latrines instead of shitting upstream of their water supply. We can also teach them how their local leaders are lying to them about what's true, in the scientific sense, when they persist in foisting culturally-relative beliefs about, say, the supposed inherent inferiority of women (perhaps they are the variety of Muslims who justify this with a claim that women "don't have souls").
... well, please get out of the way while those of us who know the power of science to actually discover and share real, useful, even salvational facts about the world give those children the chance to benefit from these truths, and perhaps - if those facts are about ways to establish human liberty and not just about how to build munitions - even encourage them to make their cultures less dangerous to our own.
If you are a post-modern simpleton, who believes that everything is constituted by belief, that one belief is as well-founded as another (because none are founded at all except in social practice), and that suffering from ignorance should be the accepted plight of children born into particularly ignorant and anti-scientific cultures
Because the only other alternative is to wipe out the ignorant, religious savages as they get better at coming after us to enforce their own anti-scientific, anti-human (as we know it) belief sets. And as much satisfaction as some of us might take in battles fairly won against truly evil (because ignorant) populations, surely the satisfaction is sweeter if we can transform them to something approaching civilization (even as we are only approaching civilization, and have not reached it yet - witness the Bush anti-science agenda).
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Commondreams.org is not a source of news about anything. It is a far-left fascist rant site.
... like academics don't practice censorship.
Anyone in the academy who dissents from the accepted viewpoint is instantly becomes persona non grata.
Another non-story.
They're imposing their beliefs in human rights on "other" cultures. More power to them!
--
make install -not war
"Saudi Arabia says explicitly that they censor the internet to preserve their Islamic culture and heritage, which is a pretty valid claim to make,"
Im not an expert but i know that allot of laws that are said to be part of a religion are infact not and leaders have twisted and bent ideals and laws under the guise of religion and that goes for all countries everywhere including the USA. Saudi Arabian law (apparently) also says its ok to beat your wife to within an inch of her life because thats part of islamic law and im pretty sure that its not part of the religion, in other countries its the law to cover your head with a scarf or burka and i know (correct me if im wrong) that the koran does not say that, as for censorship i think thats not in there either, im giving islamic examples because of the quote but i know there are many other examples in other countries where law and what people actually believe in are not the same.
Frankly if someone tries to access a website (and the web is a pull-medium not a push/broadcast-medium) then they have pretty much said "i want to see this", unless its a pop-up or advert that they didnt ask for, but thats the risk you take when your on the net. if an entire country decides that it does not want to see certain things from outside fair-do's, but then really they should have themselves an intranet, not an internet because there is no such thing as 100% effective filtering - you wanna try filtering even 'winzipped' traffic? you wanna try filtering traffic with even the most basic low-tech stenography or encryption? on a country-wide basis? get real.
As for my country (UK) i think i speak for everyone when i say "dont even fucking think about censoring the net! - you can stop pedophiles but thats as far as it goes, period"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"Human beings are composed of two divergent forces. Homeostasis and Transistatis. Homeostasis is a force to maintain the current situation, and transistasis is the force of change. We're consantly fighting an internal battle with change." (ok, not an exact quote, but I get the idea don't I?)
To quote some other famous philosopher, "the only constant in the universe is change". Cultures, religions trying to resist change are fighting a losing battle. Now, it's granted that certain things are more likely to change than others, but that's up to the people who believe in them. Humans, like every other organism on this earth, are constantly evolving, adapting, changing to match their environment.
With this in mind, it's counter-intuitive to try to be static, resist change. Especially when the only method you have to resist change is to deny it, ignore it, and even prohibit it. Censuring the internet is simple evidence of this: Governments in countries like Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, etc, wish to "preserve" their existence by denying the existence of other ideas. From the beginning they should have known it was a losing battle.
The trend towards enlightenment through education seems to be unstoppable.Sure you have occasional hiccups (like the dark ages) but in the end, "change is the only constant" and those who oppose change, or the possibility of change that knowledge brings, are fighting a losing battle, and they know it.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
I did. The old middle-ages Islamic empire was a savage and brutal place. Europe was even worse. What the parent said was pretty much correct.
Do you really expect an awnser this question?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
and your country agreed to it, which means you are bound by it. period.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
1. Islam is the fastest growing religion on this planet, so why worry about the Internet?
2. Muslims live and thrive in countries with open access to the Internet (like US, Canada, India); if they are just fine with it, what's wrong with Saudi citizens having open access to the Internet?
This censorship by the Saudis wouldn't have anything to do with trying to preserve the royal family's hold on power now, would it? Naaahh.. I didn't think so.. ;-)
nt
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
IIRC, it's more than just a "Canadian content" thing. In Canada there are laws restricting the manner in which corporations can advertise to children. (i.e. no using some super-duper character to sell cereal). Not such a bad idea considering children are so easily influenced.
Being on the largest undefended border makes controlling all those dang signals (tv/radio) a little difficult.
It is pretty much established that the reflexive paradox will come up in any complex system. The paradox has created a great deal angst for top thinkers like Goedel [sp], Cantor, Russell, etc..
Unfortunately, we keep building this paradox into the base of our systems of thought. I personally think the one thing Aristotle and Socrates did right was to acknowledge that their definitions were never really complete, and to procede from there. The systems built with the paradox as a central feature seem a bit mushy to me.
As I recall, Goedel's contribution was to show that the paradox will show up in any system sufficiently complex to include the whole numbers.
The US Gov is pro censorship just as much as China. We censor kiddie porn, snuff films, any digital intellectual property.
For us to preech anti censorship we actually need to follow it ourselves in our own country. Look, I'm not for having kiddie porn and snuff films all over the internet, but if we are going to be anti censorship we should start with ourselves.
The problem with the USA and why every country hates us, we never practice what we preech. We are like the pedophile priests who go around telling everyone ot follow the lord when they break all of the rules we tell them to follow.
If we are truely anti censorship would we really have had a fit over Janets breasts? Would we be censoring Howard Stern? Would we be trying to ban kiddie porn, or bomb making / hacking sites?
We were ALWAYS pro censorship, the US just wants selective censorship. We want to control what all the other countries censor out while at the same time telling them what to accept. If some other country started to release kiddie porn onto our internet saying its ok because they are anti censorship we'd have a fit.
Some things we censor, some things China and other countries censor, some countries censor things we don't censor and we censor things some other countries don't censor. If these scientists are truely anti censorship they will support Freenet. This seems political.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
With corporate nationalism I meant nation which builds on idea of every citizen's intent to maximize their personal well doing by capitalistic means.
http://www.hacktivismo.com/ - a Cult of the Dead Cow project that has been spinning its wheels for a few years. Very similar goals and targets as the academic project featured in the article.
...is the idea that if they would only hear the message, they would embrace it. They should have the right to hear our ideas, just as we have the right to hear theirs.
That does not imply that they have to listen, that they have to embrace the concept of human rights any more than we have to embrace the wonders of "strong leadership".
If a society can only exist under censorship - to keep them uninformed of the alternatives, is that right? I don't think so. That goes for countries and sects alike, seeking to cut off their members' contact with the outside world.
The problem comes when you try to impose it on them - as is the case with Bush now down in Iraq. Perhaps the majority of people in Iraq want an islamic state, that they have heard our Western ideas and rejected them.
From our point of view, they are making a big mistake. But I believe it is also their right to make that mistake. You can only offer them choices, not force them to choose what you want. Not without becoming what you liberated them from.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
email here How do i avoid thee, LF? or see for Yourself Lameness filter sucks. skcus retlif ssenemeL
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I live in Dubai, which is the financial capital of the UAE. As net censorship goes, it isn't as bad here as it is in Saudi Arabia or Iran. The censorship is generally applied to "home" based Internet access, while access is open for office based Internet. Initialy, internet access was unproxied, but some neighboring countries complained about having access to "Questionable" material (anyone who has ever studied Middle Eastern politics understands how poisonous it can be), so BAM came the proxy and all the headaches that goes with it. My problem with censorship however is that it encourages the very behaviour it was intended to stop. Whenever I try to visit a site that just happens to blocked, I get so irritated that I can't help but try to defeat the proxy. Worse, there are plenty of legitimate sites that are blocked because of poor filtering parameters. There are plenty of ways around the proxy though, so its more designed to keep children out and clueless adults (The same clueless adults who are afraid of the BIG BAD net). Censorship has nothing to do with "preserving" religious values, it has everything to do with power and maintaining control by witless clerics and hypocrites. Islam flourished when muslims hungered for knowledge, it only started to decline when clerics decided that muslims already knew enough and didn't need to know more. In the UAE, we have this proxy just to shut the neighbors up, I am looking forward to the day when it finally goes down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megawati_Sukarnoputri
:
... Reasonably could be called an "Islamic nation"
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia
"Islam is Indonesia's main religion, with almost 87% of the people adhering to it."
You are either assuming that "there is no member of set S such that T" is itself a member of set S, or that all truths are morals (if all morals were truths but not all truths were morals, then it would be possible to have objective truths but no objective morals). You have failed to establish either of these. A statement about moral right or wrong is not inherently a moral, any more than a statement about dogs is inherently a dog. And "the set of real numbers R is closed under addition" is true but not a moral statement.
Anytime I see or hear of something coming from a "group of academics", I get worried. Academics live in "Academia Land", a world very different from the rest of us. What works in their world doesn't usually work in the "real" world.
-Yikes.
Yes, GTE was (is) involved in technology diffusion to some pretty undemocratic and often repressive regimes; but so are CISCO and IBM. Much of the Chinese government (PRC) capacity to 'monitor' the Internet is thanks to CISCO 'routers'. They cost the PRC about US$25,000 a pop, financed in part by BM, and are everywhere in China.
Most of the initial push by Western companies into PRC 'cyberspace' was motivated by profit - but there were also a number of CEOs, engineers and a few foreign policy wonks that hoped they would be delivering a kind of trojan-horse. This was back in the day (late 1990s early 2000) when too many people thought that Internet diffusion would be part of the democratization puzzle in countries like China.
Turns out that the formula looks more like Internet diffusion + corruption = a freer cyberspace. The Pearl River Delta region (just outside of Hong Kong) is a great example of lots of Internet diffusion to drive manufacturing but the central government lost control due in large part to high levels of corruption.
I'm posting as an AC - apologies.
What the Saudis are doing is not so much attempting to preserve their Islamic culture and heritage as perpetuate it by restricting access to alternatives. As another poster pointed out, cultural preservation is the domain of museums and heritage societies. Legislative attempts to perpetuate culture and heritage fall afoul of the first amendment in the USA with some frequency -- are these legislative attempts at cultural status-quo-maintenance "valid" in Saudi Arabia because they don't have such a first amendment type of thing in their present culture?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Are they defending human rights, or simply trying to impose their own beliefs on people from other cultures?
People who don't want to circumvent censorship aren't being forced to as the writer seems to be alluding to.
"Here, have this censorship circumvention doodah."
"Noooo!"
"Well, you're getting it anyway!"
"Noooo, I want to use the censored version of Google and be unaware as to the state of my government!"
espo
Canada has limited freedom in the real world, let alone the Internet.
so the US is very big into censorship.
:), so i guess the culture might be a bit different.
Look @ all the upset feathers over a bit of a nipple on tv. Now its blurred out, stations broadcast with a delay to prevent saying any of the '7 words', there's the threat of a huge fine hanging overhead.
this is something that has to do with US culture. In canada, its routine to see a nipple on tv in prime time (not porn usually
In the UK, newspapers have topless women in them. You'd never see that in ohio!
The standards of public conduct are different the world over. A government has the responsibility to enforce what its citizens feel is appropriate. Now, the government should not *define* what is appropriate, the citizens should. Thus if the majority of people in saudi arabia feel a web site contravenes prevailing standards, then yes, the government would be right in 'banning' it. Hopefully the people are well enough informed to make a proper decision here.
Hopefully each society then migrates at its own pace to having very open and broad standards.
The standards of public conduct are different the world over. A government has the responsibility to enforce what its citizens feel is appropriate. Now, the government should not *define* what is appropriate, the citizens should. Thus if the majority of people in saudi arabia feel a web site contravenes prevailing standards, then yes, the government would be right in 'banning' it. Hopefully the people are well enough informed to make a proper decision here.
I strongly disagree.
Governments maybe be elected by the majority (where there is actual elections, unlike in Saudi Arabia), but they are there to represent and protect everybody, not just said majority.
That's where the concept of human rights exists, though. I guess that in some places they could actually consider freedom of speech a hurtful thing and in good faith - from their point of view - restrict it "for the good of everybody".
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I can't find any newspaper article to reference this, but there was this story about how an apartment block owner had decided to go with a satellite TV system rather than the local cable network. After winning the legal battle, a large convoy of cable TV vans surrounded the apartment block before going away.
Control what people know about and you control what they believe. This is the fundamental purpose of censorship, to control what people think. Information control is people control. When you can control what people know and believe controlling what they DO is trivial. This is why there were not constant wide-spread violent revolts in places like the USSR where most of the population believed the leftist lies they were spoon-fed every day. The few who didn't were easy to detect and for them the gulag awaited.
Here in the west, particularly in America, there is a concept known as freedom of speech. We hold the right to speak one's mind as a fundamental freedom that exists independently of whether the government protects or even acknowledges it. What most people don't realize is the fact that it implies and is dependent upon an even more basic right, and that is the freedom to make up one's mind. The freedom to think for oneself. The freedom to choose what one believes is the foundation upon which all liberty rests. After all, what use is the ability to express your thoughts and ideas when those are being determined by someone else?
Censorship is an attack upon freedom itself. The idea that by fighting it you are somehow imposing your views upon someone else is one of the most despicable lies I've ever heard, and one of the most perfect examples of the pot calling the kettle black.
It is censorship itself that seeks to impose beliefs upon people. Those who fight it work to ensure the freedom of others to make up their own minds and decide for themselves what they are going to believe.
Any culture that depends upon protection from outside influences and ideas in order to survive is a culture that is doomed to perish, and should. The reason is because the degree to which a culture must be so protected is the degree to which it is based upon lies.
A culture is a set of defining values, beliefs, and ideals held in common by a group of people. A culture is therefore valuable and beneficial to the degree to which it reflects objective truth and contributes to the well-being of those who are a part of it. Those who believe that cultures are somehow inherently precious or valuable are missing the point. The very purpose of human culture is to ensure the survival of the individuals who belong to it. Culture exists to bring individuals together and unify them as a people for the added benefit of all who are a part of it. If a culture does not do this, or does not do this as well as another culture that is competing with, then it should and will either adapt or perish. There is nothing tragic about this. The exposure to and subsequent adoption of new ideas that are more closely aligned with reality, and therefore improve the lives of everyone so exposed, is nothing to cry about.
I fully support this group's efforts to fight censorship. I don't think they go far enough however. Graeme Bunton seems to think that Saudi Arabia censoring the internet in order to preserve its islamic culture is a valid endeavor. I don't. Ideas should stand or fall based upon their own merit. Cultures, being made up of ideas and beliefs, should be held accountable to the same standard. As I said before, if a culture has to be protected from outside influences in order to survive, then it is a culture that is to that degree based upon lies. As someone who seeks to know and live with the truth, I see no reason to protect lies no matter who it is that believes them or why.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
From the Posting: Are they defending human rights, or simply trying to impose their own beliefs on people from other cultures?
If the the people from other cultures really belive that they shouldn't be looking at something, it wouldn't need to be censored.
Choose yer poison: Prophets or Profits
Kudos! I don't see that very often from libertarians.
Female Prison Rape in NY
"Are they defending human rights, or simply trying to impose their own beliefs on people from other cultures?"
I think it is a mistake to assume that you cannot defend basic human rights simply because the leaders of other cultures refuse to grant these rights to their citizens. The concept that morality is relative, and that there is no objective standard for morality, is flawed. It assumes the majority of people in a particular area, based on history, have the right to impose their collective will on the individual. Instead, the world need to recognise the objective morality of preserving basic human rights, even if the majority in that region (although usually it's a ruling minority) object. Freedom of speech is a basic human right, and no govt. has the right to to take it away, especially if it is critical of the govt. in question.
Vote for Pedro
(I am far from an expert on Islam, so I am not going to go too far into details I don't feel comfortable stating.)
Ignoring the fact that you are badly exaggerating (or at least mixing together different countries' customs into one big definition), most of this has nothing to do with Islam really. The current dominant strain of Islam can seem oppressive by Western standards (largely because it is a response to Western cultural imperialism, IMO, so of course it is opposed), but there are pretty liberal Islamic nations now and in the past. Look at much of the Middle East during the European Medieval Age, for example.
And some elements of Islam are still massively less repressive than what you might find in Christianity. For example, the fact you aren't supposed to convert your children just because it is your religion - you wait until they are old and educated enough to make their own choice.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
They're worried about imposing their beliefs on another culture?
The point of their exercise is that members of a given culture (their governments) have imposed their beliefs on the people of that culture. It is up to the PEOPLE to decide what the "culture" is - NOT the government.
In any event, there is NO culture worth "preserving" if it cannot "preserve" itself, by definition. (And the Iraqis are proving and preserving daily by shooting US troops.)
These people need to get straight on this or their efforts will be half-hearted and useless.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
No, because that would be an example of the majority imposing their will on the minority. In other words, mob rule. The government should take steps to prevent the tyranny of the majority.
Opening up cultures to different views via the Internet is not the same as slaughtering the people making up that culture. Had the Europeans treated the aboriginal people as humans deserved to be treated, their culture would have survived in a much more vital form.
It is proper for the government of Saudi Arabia to protect the country against foreign military invasions. It is not proper to block "un-Islamic" ideas.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
> Are they defending human rights, or simply trying
> to impose their own beliefs on people from other
> cultures?
Both. BTW - to Impose or to Persuade and convince? See Fallacy of Prejudicial Language
I don't see that very often from people of any political stripe.
If we had been trading with them, would they have been able to buy more sophisticated systems? China has advanced weapons - I'm not sure if their delivery systems can reach the entire continental US, but I'm sure it can reach the west coast. They are also adapting their government to move towards capitalism. Lots of conflicting sides, and I just don't have an answer. However, as a Libertarian I can say this: it's not the government's job to regulate who we trade with (see: most favored nation status - which is now known as something else.)
espo
Large parts of the Islamic world are controlled by an America which is founded in Christianity and often interested in maximising the profit of Ford, GE, and Microsoft. If American freedoms were fully dedicated to espousing freedoms, then why is America not promoting freedom more?
By Western Standards, do you mean Christian standards - becuase there are many of those, and they often conflict.
In many Islamic and non-Islamic countries it is not permitted for men or women to walk naked in a public place. There is a feeling among many communities that nakedness of the human form is something that should be kept for private occasions. Nakedness is not just an Islamic issue, although many countries apply different standards, and public nudity in the USA is a relatively new phenomenon.
Around 100,000 rapes of women are reported in the USA each year, and many others in Australia, Mexico, Canada and South Africa. Abuse of women is not just an Islamic problem.
Polygamy in Islam is only permitted if a man can support all the dependents. In some countries, a man can marry a woman even if he is a crook and a loser.
Those who believe that rights are arbitrary are usually those who believe that human beings have no particular nature but are in all important ways products of their culture. Generally these folks also believe that rights are an arbitary gift of a culture/society. There is no understanding of rights growing out the nature of human beings and what that nature requires to function well and happily. So to these folks the right to speak and communicate ones ideas and opinions is a mere cultural artifact, and inexplicable gift of society, that one cannot demand if one was so unfortunate as to be born in a society without such. At leeast one cannot demand it as a "right".
Similarly, no one can fight against the absence of rights they consider the norm because rights have no basis and no universality among human beings. So these folks consider seeking to guarantee the rights of others in other culture as "cultural imperialism". To be consistent, if rights are the gifts of society, then the society may take away what it gives.
I can only hope that if we lose some of our rights in the US that some "cultural imperialists" rise to our aid! Rights are derived from the nature of human beings. They are not free arbitrary gifts of the state to be granted or withheld by its whim. Persons who do not have certain inalienable rights are living under some greater or lesser degree of tyranny against their own nature as human beings. Any who wish to help them gain and keep their rights should be applauded rather than being sneered at as "imposing their culture".
Yes, there were a lot of bad things done to Aboriginals at a time in the past, but this applies to pretty much any body of people whose land is usurped by another body of people. The big problem with the situation in Australia which really makes it stand out is that this happened relatively recently, and rather than buy the land for a ridiculously low price (see the American colonies), the colonists/invaders declared terra nullius over the land - ie, they declared that no one owned it. This came back and bit the country in the ass a while back with the Mabo ruling, setting a precendent for return of land to Aboriginals.
However, I would not agree that the aboriginal culture would have survived any better in the absence of western force. It wasn't a particularly advanced culture - the aboriginals were nomadic, extremely disjointed, and had a fairly primitive and mythical spirituality. The lures of superiour weaponry, alcohol, and other "niceties" of western civilisation lured aboriginals in just as they lure us all in today.
Posted anonymously because I modded the topic earlier.
MUTE-Net is a searchable anonymous p2p application that just came out in December 2003, and is working well (for anonymous p2p).
They did not put in file resume yet because they wanted to fix all the problems other then a node disconnecting first. After file resume is in it should be a great program, esp. since it has file hash like emule/edonkey.
Wikipedia Article on MUTE
It doesn't sound to me that the Canadian government has anything to do with this project. Why are you blameing these students. They may, or may not, also be trying to fix whatever problems Canada may have. I doubt you know about that. I don't.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I would perhaps replace the word communist with the phrase opressive regime or military dictatorship.
Very extreme religion (such as the Catholics in the spanish inquisition) is usually violently opressive. Islam is just the same. Not all islamic women are forced to wear the sack and yashmak. I live in London and the edgware road is like the middle east. The cafe menus are in arabic etc. And the women dress pretty racy to be honest. Racier than most english women certainly. Islam is not the Taliban, just like the spanish inquisition is not Catholicism or Christianity. The Spanish inquisition sort of edited out the important christian quality of forgiveness.
You're interpreting the original post's take on "Right and Wrong" to mean "Truth", which it doesn't.
Just because something's true doesn't make it right, and vice versa. The Holocaust (as an example) was True, in the sense that it did happen. Out personal beliefs are what we use to decide whether it was Right or Wrong. Obviously, some of the people behind it thought it was Right, the majority of people today think it was Wrong. What this doesn't alter is whether it was True or not.
There can be a universal "Truth" but that doesn't affect whether there's a universal "Right" - the two are (or at least, can be, depending on an individual's point of view) independent.
enough said
Banned, is indeed, the correct word. Your message than goes on to explain why certain stations are banned.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It is censorship based on supposed national origin of content. That is still censorship.
And you know what? The system works
No, as it is censorship and is totally unwarranted, the system stinks.
The notion that 'foreign stations are banned' is patently ridiculous
It's a fact. My Canadian friends have to deal with it and get "illegal" satellite feeds in order to get around the ban.
There are more and better-known Canadian recording artists and actors than ever before
Of course of you censor group B, group A flourishes.
And "Cheers!" to John Ashcroft. How's your quaint little shut-down-the-adult-film-industry crusade going?
The US has a censorship problem, of course. This does not deny the fact that Canada also has a major censorship problem.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If there is "lots of good canadian music" only as a result of censoring foreign content, you really have to wonder how good it really is. You know, if you ban Linux/*IX/*UX and Mac OS, then no-one can deny that Windows is the best OS out there!
this isn't censorship, no message is being rejected or filtered.
Censorship based on supposed national/ethnic/etc content is a time-honored part of the censorship picture. No message is being rejected or filtered....unless it is foreign, of course. Then it is OK to censor it?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.