Survey Reveals Americans Support Blog Censorship

renai42 writes "A new survey has revealed that Americans overwhelmingly support strong censorship for blogs, even though a substantial amount have never actually been to one. Eighty percent of the 2,500 respondents did not believe that bloggers should be allowed to publish home addresses and other personal information about private citizens. However, more than one-third of respondents had never heard of blogs before participating in the survey, and only around 30 percent of participants had actually visited a blog themselves."

Comments

Who did the study?

[OverlordQ]

Ah yes, nothing like an austrailian news organization (the writer not ZDNet), quoting a survey by some webhost (alot of people have probably never heard of) of 2500 people to tell what the 292 million Americans favor.

Sensitive public information it is not!

[Understudy]

Most Americans are unaware of how much of their information is public. You address and phone number are public information and most efforts you can try do not prevent it from being accesiable to the public. The problem is most Americans think that their information is private, it isn't. You want to start a flamewar on /. Just do a whois on someone's website and post it in a /. story. Dont believe me I did it here
The replies show how other respond to items like this. This is not about bloggers rights or whether or not they are journalists. They are about the fact that most Americans continue to revel in their ignorance about what they think is their right to privacy.

Re:But how?

[Maestro4k]

Banning people from publishing the personal details of others is perfectly fair. This is nothing to do with 'unsuitable' content. While the article goes into more detail this appears to be more about privacy than regular censorship based on mature content. This just appears to be slashdot trying to kick off a load of censorship arguments and get more ad hits.

• So you think we need to stop the phone companies publishing people's addresses and phone numbers in their phone books? What about the county courthouse, they have your warranty deeds and trustee deeds on file with your addresses on those as well. Do we make the Register of Deeds an armed guard making sure no one can read the _public_ information stored in the warranty and trustees deed books?

• This isn't about unsuitable content or privacy, it's a poll with questions designed to stir up trouble. Addresses are public information. You may not like someone posting your address on their blog, but you can't stop them, or anyone else, from figuring out what your public address is. If it's information that is private, sure this is an issue of privacy, but that's not what the article says, it says "home addresses", starting us off right away with the main bit of personal info being totally public.

  The problems occur when you have sites/blogs that are encouraging others to commit violence/etc. against the people they're posting about, but current laws cover this. I remember an anti-abortion website getting in trouble because the courts found they were actively encouraging people to kill the doctors they provided info about on their site.

Re:Doesn't really mean much...

[issachar]

That's not true. Look at the law.

If it were, then why is Ahenakew being charged under the hate speech laws? He didn't incite action. He simply went off on an anti-semitic rant. He's a jerk and his views are terrible but they didn't contain an incitement to act. And he's being charged for hate speech.

The act itself (Look at Section 319) specifies 4 elements that are necessary for a charge.
To get charged you have to:
1) communicate statements, 2) in a public place, 3) incite hatred against an identifiable group, (not necessarily action) 4) in such a way that there will likely be a breach of the peace.

In other words you can be charged if your statement is likely to cause a breach of the peace even if you had no call to action in your statement.

The only problem with the act in regards to free speech that I can see is the odd distinction between public and private statements. If someone makes a bunch of statements in public that qualify as hate speech as they're likely to cause a breach of the peace, that's a crime. But if they make the same statements at a private invitation only dinner event and the statements a breach of the peace is still the likely result that's okay? Doesn't make a lot of sense at first glance.