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VDARE Fights Blocking By Censorware
Bennett Haselton writes "The anti-immigration site VDARE is publicizing the fact that it has been blocked as a 'hate site' by several Internet blocking programs, although some of them backed off and un-blocked it after receiving a letter from VDARE's lawyer. Since blocking software is bound to remain in use in most public schools for the foreseeable future, this raises the question: Is it possible for a blocking company to define a 'hate site' in a consistent way, without including conservative groups that might file a First Amendment lawsuit if their sites were blocked from public school computers? See what VDARE says about the content on their own site, and how blocking software companies have handled this issue in the past and what they might do this time." This is the first in a series of article by Bennett Haselton, writing for us from the Peacefire group. Read on for the rest of his piece.
The anti-immigration site VDARE.com is publicizing the fact that their site is blocked as a "hate site" by several different blocking programs. They don't name the programs, although they say that four companies used to block VDARE and "backed off after receiving a lawyer's letter".
It seems to be working, since according to the online lookup forms provided by WebSense, N2H2, SurfControl and SmartFilter, only SmartFilter lists the site under "hate speech"; the rest either don't categorize it or list it in innocuous categories. (N2H2 lists it as "Web Page Hosting/Free Pages", which makes no sense -- but not only that, N2H2 is now owned by the same company that makes SmartFilter, which means the company has VDARE listed one way in one product, and a different way in another.)
VDARE says they decided that showing legal muscle was a good way to get unblocked, after reading about an experiment Peacefire did in which we found that censorware companies would block sites with anti-gay content when they thought the sites were run by individuals, but would not block the *exact same content* when it was hosted by "mainstream" groups like Focus on the Family. Concludes VDARE: "The obvious reason for the double standard is that the foundations have lawyers on staff, and volunteer lawyers, and the Censorware companies are afraid of them." True -- although we did nominate AFA.net as a "hate site" at about the same time, and it did get blocked by Cyber Patrol, so it is possible if the content is extreme enough.
I'm against blocking VDARE, even from people under 18, but only because I'm against such blocking in general. Polls show that most people under 18 are more liberally-minded about race than their parents, suggesting that if you want to end racism, give minors more rights and freedom of information, not less. There was a big flap when it came out that in some Islamic schools in New York, parents had their children taught with textbooks which said that "the Jews killed their own prophets" and "you will find them ever deceitful", but without more civil rights for people under 18 to seek information for themselves, there's not much that anybody can do about it.
But as for whether VDARE really should be listed as a "hate site", the site owner himself says that VDARE is not "white nationalist", but adds, "We also publish on VDARE.COM a few writers, for example Jared Taylor, whom I would regard as 'white nationalist'". Well even if VDARE itself claims not to be 'white nationalist', if they host white nationalist writings, it's still accurate to classify the site as a place where such content is located. VDARE itself is also listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. VDARE's founder insists they are merely anti-immigration, not white nationalist, although he admits he once thought about adding a chapter to his anti-immigration book Alien Nation about the "last white family" (not the "last non-illegal-immigrant family") to leave Los Angeles.
Like BoingBoing.Net did before them, VDARE is retaliating against the block by encouraging people to learn how to get around blocking software. I wonder if they looked closely at our site first, since we fight censorship from the point of view of advocating greater civil rights for minors, which would probably not be a popular view with VDARE's ultra-conservative base. And if that's not enough, I'm planning to contact WebSense, SurfControl, and any other company that doesn't currently list VDARE as a "hate site", and ask them why not. So, VDARE sends us traffic, and this is how we repay them.
It seems to be working, since according to the online lookup forms provided by WebSense, N2H2, SurfControl and SmartFilter, only SmartFilter lists the site under "hate speech"; the rest either don't categorize it or list it in innocuous categories. (N2H2 lists it as "Web Page Hosting/Free Pages", which makes no sense -- but not only that, N2H2 is now owned by the same company that makes SmartFilter, which means the company has VDARE listed one way in one product, and a different way in another.)
VDARE says they decided that showing legal muscle was a good way to get unblocked, after reading about an experiment Peacefire did in which we found that censorware companies would block sites with anti-gay content when they thought the sites were run by individuals, but would not block the *exact same content* when it was hosted by "mainstream" groups like Focus on the Family. Concludes VDARE: "The obvious reason for the double standard is that the foundations have lawyers on staff, and volunteer lawyers, and the Censorware companies are afraid of them." True -- although we did nominate AFA.net as a "hate site" at about the same time, and it did get blocked by Cyber Patrol, so it is possible if the content is extreme enough.
I'm against blocking VDARE, even from people under 18, but only because I'm against such blocking in general. Polls show that most people under 18 are more liberally-minded about race than their parents, suggesting that if you want to end racism, give minors more rights and freedom of information, not less. There was a big flap when it came out that in some Islamic schools in New York, parents had their children taught with textbooks which said that "the Jews killed their own prophets" and "you will find them ever deceitful", but without more civil rights for people under 18 to seek information for themselves, there's not much that anybody can do about it.
But as for whether VDARE really should be listed as a "hate site", the site owner himself says that VDARE is not "white nationalist", but adds, "We also publish on VDARE.COM a few writers, for example Jared Taylor, whom I would regard as 'white nationalist'". Well even if VDARE itself claims not to be 'white nationalist', if they host white nationalist writings, it's still accurate to classify the site as a place where such content is located. VDARE itself is also listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. VDARE's founder insists they are merely anti-immigration, not white nationalist, although he admits he once thought about adding a chapter to his anti-immigration book Alien Nation about the "last white family" (not the "last non-illegal-immigrant family") to leave Los Angeles.
Like BoingBoing.Net did before them, VDARE is retaliating against the block by encouraging people to learn how to get around blocking software. I wonder if they looked closely at our site first, since we fight censorship from the point of view of advocating greater civil rights for minors, which would probably not be a popular view with VDARE's ultra-conservative base. And if that's not enough, I'm planning to contact WebSense, SurfControl, and any other company that doesn't currently list VDARE as a "hate site", and ask them why not. So, VDARE sends us traffic, and this is how we repay them.
They simply need a new category "political controversy" that people can optionally block, for items/sites where it's subjective to label them as "hate."
There is a historical pattern of the "hate" bans leaning "a certain way," if you know what I mean, and with a broad brush. Some sites are also the target of campaigns to have them labeled as "hate" by political opponents.
I don't think VDARE would be able to argue that they don't foster political controversy, though I'm sure the new category would elicit some argument. I used to follow links there from time to time, and while I would categorize them as "strident" I don't think I could honestly condemn them as a "hate" site, anymore than (and probably less than) I could CNN or Reuters.
One of the biggest problems with blocking is that definitions of "offensive" vary from person to person.
Ok, sure, we got the net nanny stuff blocking things it maybe should and maybe shouldn't, and we can have that debate for the 47th time. But do we need the giant screed about whether these people are white supremacists or not? Shouldn't that have been, oh, I dunno, edited out? By someone whose job it is to edit things? Like some kind of an editor? And why is there this weird aside about some Islamic textbook thing wedged in there?
I mean, I don't know what the article-publishing mechanism is. I wouldn't imagine you'd design it as just a button labeled "Publish" and no edit controls, but I don't really see any evidence to the contrary.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I see no rights violation here.
Just junk food for thought...
without a damn good reason.
What we need is less blocking.
I can understand blocking pornographic content from school servers, and I can understand blocking excessive gore and even games (to make them focus on their studies or something).
But you shouldn't block websites which have a person or groups opinions. As I like to say (and I think many others do):
"You have a right to your opinion, however sick, twisted, and wrong it may be."
Protecting young children, I think I can understand. But if kids cannot judge what is right or wrong on their own by 18, it is probably the parents and/or schools sheltering them that's retarding their judgement.
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
It seems like all the blocked sites need to do is hire a lawyer, file a letter threatening lawsuit, and get a chance at being unblocked.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
It's hard to be a pro-gun site and not be blocked, too. You need not necessarily be promoting violence or have any images of people even using guns, much less anything that's been shot by a gun. All you need to do is show guns positively and the blockers think, "Oh, horrors! Kiddies might go on a rampage!" and you're on the blacklist. Of course, anti-gun sites are fine, and get right through. Hard for a schoolkid to get any balanced information.
If one is going to filter (let's just assume for the moment that filtering is inevitable), then one needs to distinguish between responsible sites that talk about the political issues involved and the ones that glorify the elements of that issue that some find unsavory. There's a big difference between NRA.org and WatchMeBlastEverythingThatMovesIntoBloodyPulp.net - you can't lump them together as "gun sites" and block both.
Constitutionally Correct
You mean it begs the question?
Wait a minute . . .
WTF! A Slashdot summary that gets it right? What next? Dogs and cats living together?
-Dave
Who are we defending here...the website, or the filters?
Because it seems to me that the companies filtering sites are the ones being trampled on by lawyers, forced by threat of litigation to back off their initial judgement that the page contained racist ideas. It sounds like it's THEIR rights being interfered with here.
After a quick reading of a few things on the site, I'd say that if it's not racist, it teeters on the edge of it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I was going to slam the submitter about their "anti-immigration" remark, which is usually weasel speak for characterizing anti-ILLEGAL immigration views. But what the hell, I put off the knee-jerk reaction and checked Wikipedia's VDARE entry to see who these guys really are.
They're not only anti-immigration (which is un-American IMHO), they sound like a bunch of racists. But should they be blocked?
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
But all it said was "nothing to see here, move along."
Hmph. Guess I'll just go back to my school work.
Is that what the white supremacists are calling themselves these days? The PC (really more "doublespeak" in this case) bandwagon just got a little bit more crowded...
to do something objectively that essentially a subjective task
however, that doesn't mean:
1. you should stop trying
2. you should consider getting it perfect as your goal
it is wrong to block a site that shouldn't be blocked
it is also wrong to allow unfettered access to the web by kids in school
but you can't stop doing one wrong without committing the other, so that there exists a tension between two perfectly valid goals, where you always have to be careful about what you block, mindful of the fact that no matter what you do, you won't get it perfect
but there are a lot of people out there who are idealists, who believe that if you can't do something perfect, you shouldn't try to do it all. there are also a lot of people who are only capable of looking at wrongs completely out of context. in other words, they see a downside, a negative, but they don't understand that for some thankless challenges in life, there is a downside no matter what you do, and the goal is not get something upside, or even a wash, but to just minimize the downsides. and yet some people therefore:
1. don't recognize the nature of the problem, and oppose an action just because a downside exists (nevermind that it is impossible for a downside not to exist for some problems in life)
2. don't recognize that acting imperfectly in some problems beats not acting at all. but because they can't be perfect, they'd rather not act, but they only wind up compounding the problem, simply because of their idealism
the fact that these tensions between two competing wrongs exist for some tasks in life doesn't mean you stop trying, but it does mean that you unfortunately must continually whether withering criticism from howling idealists who just don't understand the nature of the dilemna
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean, it's the American Left that gets its way via the courts, since it can't achieve anything at the ballot box. Well, apart from Diebold conspiracy theories.
Oh, and as a refection of the Slashdot demographic, I fully expect this post to be modded -1000000, Offtopic.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
how a "First Amendment lawsuit" is relevant. As I understand, the First Amendment only restricts the government.
Any form of censoring inherently violates the right to free speech, for the simple reason that it is impossible to objectively define universally acceptable standards for censoring.
For example, take something which we, for the most part, can equally identify: Pornography. Now define it. If you're reaching for a dictionary, note that it will use the word "obscene" or somesuch - a subjective, qualitative adjective. To make the impossible even harder on yourself, try to come up with a strict definition that would clearly differentiate pornography from nude art. You can't.
There is a reason that former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart came up with the famous case-law definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it." I cannot think of a more ambiguous definition for something which we know so well, and if we can't even come up with a suitable definition for something so clear as pornography, how ever could we come up with a clear definition for anything else?
Taking time to read about them on their site, they do seem slighty rascist- but to quote Avenue Q, "Everybody's a little bit rascist". They aren't advocating killing other ethnicities, denying rights to hispanics, or anything illegal- they seem primarily concerned with enforcing existing immigration laws and supporting Free Speech rights of extremists. If having an extreme political view is cause for censorship, /. should be high on the ban list.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
to characterize anti-immigration politics as racist? It's nothing but a patent, ad hominem rhetorical trick to try to change the subject from "Are U.S. immigration and naturalization policies sound?" to "Are people who want to change U.S. immigration and naturalization policies racists or not?" I am a liberal democrat and I'm fucking offended by it. It insults the intelligence of everyone who wants to have a rational debate about the immigration issue.
Why? Has any scientific study ever concluded that watching pornography harms children?
Or is it fear that they might actually learn something parents don't want them to learn?
Like authentic footage from WWII, Viet Nam, L.A. and Iraq you mean? Heavens forbid that the kids see the level of horror that actually happened and happens. They might catch politics or become peaceniks. Oh vey.
If there's anyone who deserve full uncensored access to any and all information, it's children. How else can they make informed decisions and grow up into the best they can be? If adults wants to censor something for themselves based on beliefs or tradition, I'm not going to stop them, but don't limit the information children get. They deserve a chance to make their own choices, with a full knowledge of both sides of any issues.
Regards,
--
*Art
Or anti illegal immigration? I've never visited VDARE, but I'm pretty sure there's a difference between groups that want to enforce immigration laws and those that want to stop all immigration.
Where does common sense enter into your argument? Should parents let their kids read disgusting stuff on KKK web sites, and NAMBLA web sites? This web site is just as offensive and equally brain dead. I see no possible benefit for anybody to read a website like this one other to say, "Wow! There are some sick fuckers out there!" If I were a parent, I don't know that I'd want my kids to be reading this idiotic propganda without me by their side explaining to them that there are some really unbelievably stupid people out there.
I work for the State of New Mexico. Governor Richardson has mandated that all state offices use a central blocking system, currently WebSense. Quite a bit is blocked: porn, or course, but also personal sites, blogs, hate sites, games, IM related sites (made installing Jabber here fun), and many others. Oddly, Slashdot is not blocked, neither is Penny Arcade, nor The Onion :-)
For some categories, we have half an hour discretionary time per day we can use for anything but porn, hate sites, etc. Personally, I'm glad my tax dollars aren't being wasted. No! I'm not wasting tax dollars here, as I explained to my supervisor, my visits to slashdot are for "researching industry trends" and "developing valuable contacts in the open source community."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There is a lot of information here from the EFF on site blocking by censorware:
http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Censorware/
Also some related links from ACLU and other groups.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Do you blame the manufacturer of the bullet or the person who pulled the trigger? It is the school that implemented their software and everyone should know by now that it is impossible to not have false negatives when using censorware to block sites. The school either has the right to censor stuff or they don't. That is all that needs to be decided.
I don't think I could honestly condemn them as a "hate" site, anymore than (and probably less than) I could CNN or Reuters.
You mean CNN and Reuters regularly publish racialist pseudo-science by eugenecists? People who argue that:
Well, alright then...I wonder how they'd rate Charlie Johnson's Echo Chamber, along with the like minded sites. Hate works *both* ways, y'know.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
oops. meant this instead of the other URL. The message conveyed remains the same.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
One of the largest (mostly) completely rabid atheist sites out there. Yep, right here. You just did it! YOU. You obviously hate "religious fundies" because that is a deragotory term the way you used it, you "hate" folks because of their religion! HAHAHAHAH! gotcha! No wiggling, admit it!
See how this works? Constant attacks on religion of all types, and as extreme as it gets, complete with stuff pretty close to threats..I've seen it here. Hate speech? Looks like it to me following this dubious "logic". Is it cool to block slashdot?
How about those "everything hispanic is just so damn cool" sites, the bronze warrior aztlan overlord la raza reconquista sites?(despite them all wanting to move here and theior own nations are cesspools) Are they being blocked by these softwares? They go so far as to want to kill off all the whites in the south west US, I've read some on their sites, I've seen pics of posters some of them have carried at rallies, complete with graphical representations of white folks with their heads cut off by bronze warrior machetes.. Blocked? Are they? The US attorney general is a member of a hispanic separatist organization! I have seen quite a bit of "hate speech" there at those sites following these strict guides. How about Free Republic and D.U.? You honestly want to say you (anyone you, not being specific at all) haven't seen a variety of "hate speech" there?
And so on.
Here's some reality. You have to be 100% pro gay or be classed as a hater. You have to be 100% zionist and pro everything israel does or you are a "hater" (that's a HUGE one in this society, go on, admit it) You have to be 100% pro ultra radical feminism or you are a hater. You have to either bend over and spread 'em with a smile on your face for clinton or bush or you are a hater. And so on.
There's a HUGE list, and if you look close EVERYONE ON THE PLANET has some semblence of "hate speech" naughty thoughts and the occassional "hate" scribble or "hate" utterences, so let's just block everything and go back to living in caves and grunting. Then instead of hate speech we can engage in mass "club love" and be "sharing" with the "multicultural" neighbors.
As to the original example in the article, it appears you can be pro anything, anything at all, any other race or tribe or ethnicity, other than having european heritage in your family tree. Then that becomes "hate speech".
Screw that, screw "current political correctness"..because that is the root of all hate. Want to see the simply best possible examples of the most intolerant and bigoted people on the planet, just in general terms, I mean just raw extremism, no matter the subject being discussed, where there exists only black and white but never the shades of gray? Go to any university and watch the young folks there when they discover politics.
Been there, done that,guilty as charged. Learn from history and learn from the mistakes of youth, because YOU will be making them, a lot of them. You just won't see it for many years, that's all.
And just what in the hell does illegal immigration have to do with racism?
when you are a child, you are the responsibility of your parents
why is that i ask you?
small hint: maybe because children haven't yet formed their full mental faculties, and therefore aren't entirely accountable or responsible
and since the whole point of school is to form those mental faculties, maybe the idea is to form them properly
for example, if you were to insist that exposure to hardcore porn or hardcore violence would have no lasting negative effects on a child, well then why can't kids drive? or shoot a gun? or have sex? or do anything they want to?
i mean i think you would agree that if a child commits a crime, it would be wrong to try them as an adult, right?
maybe with that sliver of insight you will be able to work the rest of the logic out yourself about why treating children like adults is wrong
you go to school to expose a mind to formative material, to create adults, it's a process
part of that formative exposure involves introducing a child to ideas and concepts when they are mentally prepared to handle it
hardocre sex? hardcore violence? at what age is a child prepared to handle those things in your view?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who's The Illegal Alien Now Pilgrim?
/Lives in Texas by the way...
There goes my karma, but I don't care. The message that the image portrays speaks for itself. My ancestors were here first. Someone should tell these guys that.
> Is it possible for a blocking company to define a 'hate site' in a consistent
> way, without including conservative groups that might file a First Amendment
> lawsuit if their sites were blocked from public school computers?
The definition of "hate speech" is purely political, as evidenced by your evident inability to conceive of a "hate site" being associated with anything but "conservative" groups. Thus government-mandated blocking of "hate sites" is censorship.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Any kind of 'hate' speech is protected under the first amendment. I do not believe that schoolkids doing research should be blocked from any kind of protected speech, other than pornography. Even for porn, I'd classify it right with gaming and chat sites; nothing that will harm them, just a useless time waster when they should be learning.
Political extremists, racism, zealotry... we should be exposing kids to this, and explaining why it is wrong; not hiding them from it to the point where they don't recognize it when they see it. My children shouldn't need to use the Internet at home to do their research.
I am fundamentally opposed to limitations on speech. I believe that censorship is almost universally wrong, and suppression of ideas has no place in a school setting.
Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Maddox has a commentary over here.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
"Polls show that most people under 18 are more liberally-minded about race than their parents, suggesting that if you want to end racism, give minors more rights and freedom of information, not less."
From the point of view of a young middle-class Australian white male who's not ashamed to be labelled "racist" this is incorrect, and depends largely on the survey group. In Britain and France, young white working-class males (and many females) are by far most likely to support nationalist parties such as the British National Party or the French National Front. In December 2005, over 5000 people spontaneously rallied against harassment from ethnic gangs at Sydney's Cronulla beach, again most of them young people from working/lower middle class families. Cartoons such as South Park have proven that young people actually do hold deeply nationalistic or conservative views - often more than out parents, but the mainstream media and politically correct educational institutions work overtime to ensure they're not expressed.
At high school I was first introduced to the teachings that I now think of as politically correct brainwashing, along with the supposed benefits of multiculturalism and diversity. I began asking questions about why exactly am I being taught this instead of English, mathematics and science and decided to do some research on my own, as I was not going to get any realistic answers from the teaching staff.
One of the things I quickly noticed was that multicultural attitudes have been reinforced the strongest in the core parts of the British Empire - Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, along with France and Germany following World War II. The United States was already partly a multicultural nation and had the least to lose. To the strategic policy of the United States, they wanted to ensure the collapsing British Empire or defeated Europe would not again threaten their power, and promoting multiculturalism would thwart any attempts at rivaling nationalism in these countries. see divide and rule It was not without challenge however, and in the 60's, Enoch Powell delivered a hugely popular speech criticising multiculturalism and mass immigration in Britain. He himself was always suspicious of the intentions of the United States in WWII, and was later barred from the Prime Ministership by Edward Heath, whom I extremely doubt made the decision from a bleeding heart, but rather due to jingoism from the USA.
Multiculturalism worked better than expected, and even today the US is being divided and conquered, just like the former British Empire - by a global elite of super-rich tycoons with no loyalty. Pat Buchanan is dead right when he says there are forces that want to do away with the USA and its constitution altogether and create a North American Union, later to be merged with the European Union. To them, nationalism and paleoconservatism isn't just an economic inefficiency, it's also a threat to their grip on power. Do you really think multiculturalism and political correctness - ideologies coming from the very top down - exist due to bleeding hearts? Or is it because the richest and most powerful people in the world have something to gain from it? Yes, we'll see more arbitary labellings of "hatespeak" directed against opponents of the super-rich and influential into the near future, along with the disappearance of your hard-won freedoms, as well as sheeple actually SUPPORTING them because they want to fight racism and be "doing the right thing."
If you're thinking that I'm "racist" or something along those lines, I suggest you get a job with a large corporation such as a bank or media company and try and make it to the top, especially if you're of a different race. Feminists and racial activists have often noticed making changes for affirmitive action and anti-discriminaton laws have been easy, but try getting a position on the executive board of a major corpo
I'm an immigrant and it's better to have all sorts of speeches allowed than censored. Many people do not understand how great it is. In USSR/Russia you still have to watch what you're talking about or you get beaten or shot. I've been there.
I'm not offended by VDare, I'm actually share many of their views. Illegal IS bad in any form as murder, theft or crossing the border. Desire to live in their closed language-separated communities IS bad, because it weakens the nation.
So elsewhere I have argued that parents shouldn't have the right to deny their children access to conflicting views. Just as we prevent parents from abusing their children, keeping them out of school stoping them from learning to read or similar harms we shouldn't allow parents to brainwash their children with their prejudices and stop them from hearing conflicting viewpoints. The radical islamic parents in the article are a good example of why we shouldn't let parents totally control what their children are allowed to see.
Of course many people immediatly reply to this by bringing up examples of hateful, prejudiced positions (KKK, NAMBLA whatever) and argue that surely it is bad to let their children see this material without supervision. I'm far from convinced it is, it takes far more than happening across a site to brainwash a child. However, the best way to make sure most kids are more likely to view this material and be susceptible to it's influence is to tell them that they can't see it and make it a challenge to get around the blocking software.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I just tested the site against my Blue Coat proxy and it finds Vdare.com to be a 'Political/Activist Site'. That doesn't seem too unobjectionable...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
of course kids should get sex education
they should even get it early
but you can't seem to keep track of the subject matter. i don't understand how the frak you mix up giving kids sex education, which is good and was not what we were talking about, and allowing them access to hardcore pornography, which is bad at an early age, and was the subject matter
furthermore, you SHOULD allow teens access to hardcore porn/ violence. the issue is at WHAT AGE
so lets switch the tables on you, oh great swami: access to hardcore porn: what age?
age 13?
age 8?
how about age 5?
you say no to age 5?
OH NOES!!!! YOU CENSORING CONTROLLING INSECURE CONSERVATIVE ARSEHOLE! DON'T YOU KNOW KNOWLEDGE IS A GOOD THING(tm)!
(snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Parent is quite correct.
Actually, I don't believe in any age limits at all, so you're attacking a straw man here. Did you have fun building it?
The explanations you give the kids for what they see have to be adjusted to the level of understanding that the kids have, but they should be honest, and there's no point in hiding anything. If they want to see a money shot, let them. If they don't understand it, it doesn't do any harm, and once they're old enough to understand the concept of procreation, you can explain what semen is. Same with violence -- as soon as they are old enough to understand what pain and grief is, they should see that it happens to others, what does it, and if asking, being given an honest answer they can understand.
it's ok to show kindergarteners hardcore violence and hardcore pornography
any strawmen there oh great one?
you got me, i've been completely defeated by your cutting insight: innocence doesn't exist. mentally, we're all born fully formed adults, capable of correctly processing, contextualizing, and understanding all stimuli, no matter how sexual or violent. at age 5, we can't benchlift 20 pounds, and we don't have any pubic hair, but we can watch the nick berg beheading video or little anal annie and then get a good night's sleep without any misunderstandings or misinterpretations whatsoever about normal human interaction
truly, you have blazing insights into the human condition
pfffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
what part of the concept of a child at an "early age" and what that means psychologically escapes your vast intellectual capabilites of insight and your vast experience with the human condition? ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
As if First Amendment anti-censorship lawsuits were limited to "conservative" groups!
As if being being anti-immigration was so limited!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Well, if only things were so simple. Modern research is showing that the population of the Americas is more complicated than originally thought, with people migrating from both Europe and Asia. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/claimbonn.html
So which argument should we follow, "We were here first" or "We were here last"? Because you may not have been as first as you think you are, and hell, we're probably related anyway.
http://www.themediareport.com/nov2005/mm-history-r ewrite.htm
AFAIK, Steele has never claimed to have had Oreos thrown at him. But would Dems or their supporters pass out Oreos and claim they represent a black Republican, and then deny it? I doubt it. The Dems would have to be the kind of people who'd say a Republican President was worse than Hitler, or that US soldiers were like Nazis, before they'd fall to the depths necessary for them to do that. Or they'd do extreme things like post homophobic and anti-semitic photoshopped images of a Dem senator who lost his primary to the moonbat flavor of the month and dared to run as an independent.
Oh, wait....
It sneakily equates hate groups with conservatives. The writer must have been some silly liberal. Liberals are just as likely to hate as conservatives. There was no need to single out conservatives.
Thus, the First Amendment would indeed apply.
VDARE.com
I wonder why it wasn't in the article. Well, not really.
Were they? For all you know, they might have been second or fifth. Contrary to popular mythology, the aboriginal peoples of the Americas didn't sit around a campfire, singing Kumbaya, until the arrival of the White Man. One of the reasons that the Aztecs went down so fast and hard was that their neighbors wanted revenge for many years of war and oppression.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
At least one President and a majority in both the Congress and Senate decided that certain types of speech should be against the law. I guess that means hate speech isn't really treated the same way as other forms of speech.
Cite please.
There aren't, that I know of, any Federal laws against hate speech, when it is simply "speech" and not action-producing. It is still protected as political speech, just like anything else. There are certain types of "speech" which are prohibited if they incite particular actions, but they prohibited by virtue of being actions-as-speech rather than speech per se. This has broad historical basis in the prohibitions against inciting riots, and the "fire in a crowded theater" example.
Neither one is really a type of speech being against the law, when the speech is considered independently of the action it provokes. This may seem like an academic point, but it is not. It's the difference between it actually being illegal to say something due to subject matter, and being illegal to say something in a particular time and place, to a particular audience, in order to produce a particular effect. Both situation and motivation play into its prohibition.
There is a very big difference between saying that you can't deny the Holocaust, period, and saying that you can't tell a bunch of people at a white supremacist rally to go out and kill Jews. The second case is clearly an incitement to violence and thus isn't just speech, it's also action-causing in a direct and predictable way. The first case is blatantly censorious and (although it is the case in many European countries,) would not pass Constitutional muster in the U.S. -- even if a simple majority of Congress and the President wanted to make it illegal.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
A dozen amens on your post, and a quick suggestion: Filtering has got to move towards decentralization. Providers of filtering software should not the ones with the ultimate "yea" or "nay" on a site or article.
What would make more sense (and provide some legal shelter for blackhole list servers & the like) would be to serve multidimensional karma ratings compiled from a diverse set of viewpoints, and let the clients be the ones to decide what level to browse at on any given indicator.
It would feel a lot less like censorship to me if browsing policy was determined at a very fine level of granularity, was made in close proximity to the browsers, and was fully disclosed. The further removed the censor is from the reader, the sooner that power will be abused.
Pi Ran Out
That quote does not appear anywhere in the linked article.
It's not even a put-together of various quotes from the article. The word "African" doesn't even occur. It's a complete fabrication.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Find free books.
What would make more sense (and provide some legal shelter for blackhole list servers & the like) would be to serve multidimensional karma ratings compiled from a diverse set of viewpoints, and let the clients be the ones to decide what level to browse at on any given indicator.
... by just not displaying them at all.
I think you've got the right idea. Really, we need to make web "censorship" -- if we need to do it at all -- more of a recommendation-based system. Sort of like the reverse of Amazon's "you might like this if..." system. If something offensive snuck through, then you could hit a big red button and it would add it to the block list, while also updating your preferences in its database, so that people similar in preferences to you would automatically share the block. In the same way that Last.FM suggests music based on your previous playlists, this would "suggest" censored sites to you
Basically, you could surf and when you hit a site that you find offensive, or maybe when you first ran the site it would give you examples of sites and you could pick which offend you, and it would then match you to various profiles of real people, who had rated sites based on "offensiveness." If you find Fox News particularly repugnant, then Ann Coulter is probably going to be totally off-limits.
The technology to do this seems readily available; 'recommendation engines' that take a person's preferences and extrapolate them out based on similar people are used in everything from music to movies, and they're getting better all the time. If people really want web censorship, than this is better than just turning over authority to some centralized body and letting them possess a giant God-sized rubber "censored" stamp.
The net effect of a system like this, if it were put into wide use, would probably be that people would filter out opinions that were contrary to their own. The internet would, as the software learned about you, become a little bobble-headed yes-man to your every opinion and thought. If you're conservative, than your Internet would be filled with conservatives. If you're a liberal, it'd be full of Liberals (and the occasional Bush gaffe). If you were a pro-life Objectivist anti-gun neo-Stalinist pagan, however hypocritical, as long as the system could find various combinations of preferences to match you to in its database, then you would only see stuff that matched your biases. I'm not saying this would be a good thing -- but hey, it's basically what we have already, just with less senseless screaming at each other in some pathetic attempt at rational discourse.
If we can't have an actual diversity of opinion without trying to take away each others' right to speak freely, then at least let's have a diversity of censorship.
(FYI, tongue is planted firmly in cheek throughout this, although I don't mean it as a total joke. If web censorship is a must, then a system like this would be better than where we're headed. Thus if you think this would really suck, maybe we need to re-evaluate whether we really want to start down the path at all.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The definition you are using is a reactionary oversimiplification of the term.
Similarly, "discrimination" in this context is shorthand for arbitrary discrimination based solely on any of the abovementioned categories (i.e. for no good reason other than someone belonging to an "out-group").
It may disturb you that educated people with divergent world views from your own can coin terms that shed light on inconvenient facts (like irrational self-serving hatred toward whole groups); But that does not make it some kind of nefarious newspeak (even when the term 'hate speech' is abused by both yourself and the oreo-throwers).
As for animosity, it can be a healthy thing if it doesn't consume, and has both a rational and humane basis. Which individuals we dislike or exclude ought to be based on the content of their character: their actions. Likewise, any individuals or groups acting against this ethic in favor of blind discrimination do open themselves to public expressions of disagreement and even (gasp!) hatred.
Its like the difference between excercising "good judgement" and "being judgemental". The latter is some combination of arbitrary, unnecessary and capricious (generally irrational and bigoted).
In the affairs of nations and peoples, there is no right of the first. There is only the right of the strongest. It was that way during the colonization of the Americas, and it has not really changed since then.
You don't really hear a lot from the "Southern Poverty Law Center" as far as poverty concerned.
In fact, they're largely unconcerned by poverty, their business is mainly lobby work.
No matter on which side you are on the fence when it comes to pro or contra immigration
you might like to know where they are coming from and who is paying them and why because the
"Southern Poverty Law Center" is not a mom & pop grassroots organization.
I'm including the SPLCs "Wikipedia" article controversy section here in full at the bottom of this
post because it is certainly impressive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Poverty_Law_ Center#Controversy
Controversy
The SPLC has attracted controversy surrounding its politics, "hate group" identification and monitoring methods, and financial practices. It has been described by the Washington Post as a "controversial liberal organization."[1]
[edit]
Fabrication of stories
A federal commission and the Charlotte Observer concluded that in 1996 the SPLC had "misinformed the media" and fabricated stories that black church burnings were the work of the Ku Klux Klan and other conspirators of like mind.[2] The USA Today verified and collaberated the Charlotte Observer story, commenting further that the SPLC purposefully hid the fact that some of the fires "were set by a black man."[3] Stephen Bright of the "Southern Center for Human Rights" declared that Dees "is a fraud who has milked a lot of very wonderful well-intentioned people. If it's got headlines, Morris is there."[3] The Cleveland Scene has reported that the SPLC has often woefully exaggerated its reports or reported stories that were disingenuous.[4] The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation verified and collaborated the Cleveland Scene report.[4]
[edit]
Endorsement of Marxism
Researcher Laird Wilcox give examples of the SPLC's endorsement of Marxism, citing the SPLC's support of leftist extremist groups having long-time Marxist connections, such as the "Center for Democratic Renewal of Atlanta" and the "Political Research Associates of Somerville, Massachusetts.[5]
[edit]
Financial management
The American Institute of Philanthropy, an independent charity watchdog organization, gave SPLC a grade of F because SPLC spends only 51 to 65% of its income on program services, and because it continues to fundraise even as though it is cash-rich with $137 million assets. These assets are equal to six years' worth of SPLC's operational expenses, twice that recommended as reasonable by the AIP. (Charity Rating Guide and Watchdog Report, Dec. 2004, Vol. 38) SPLC's own website [13] confirms $137 million figure. (August 10, 2006)
[edit]
David Horowitz
Myles Kantor of the Pureplay Press[14] and conservative columnist David Horowitz [15] have both accused the SPLC of exaggerating the threat of racism in order to increase fund-raising revenue and of wrongfully applying the term "hate group" to legitimate organizations.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Morris Dees have engaged in a dispute with Horowitz over material written by Chip Berlet related to Horowitz's campaign against slavery reparations, which the SPLC claims constitutes "hate speech". Horowitz writes:
The effect is to multiply the number of racial hate groups, to scare well-meaning citizens into the belief that mainstream civil rights organizations like the Center for the Study of Popular Culture are really fever swamps of hate that deserve to be lumped alongside the Ku Klux Klan. The purpose of this fear-mongering is transparent. It is to fill the already wealthy coffers of your organization by exploiting unsuspecting donors into helping you promote leftwing agendas under the guise of civil rights. [16]
The SPLC's Mark Potok responded to Horowitz by stating "we believe Mr. Berlet's article is backed up by t
If it could be tuned correctly, at least both sides of an argument could be represented.
Of course, the sites on the list are difficult to specify in the first place, but generally, society has got a fairly well defined set of taboos.
It wouldn't even have to be a full 50/50 split, framewise, just maybe a sidebar with alternative links to opposing viewpoints. It would suffer necessarily from the "flaw" that if you wisited a site that had anti-nazi sentiments, the side bar would load up pro-nazi links, but then what would happen if you didn't put anti-nazi sites on the "list" ? You would get complaints and lawsuits from the pro-nazi sites.
I think it would be a fair trade off in the end though, and would only really be of benefit to schools and maybe public libraries.
who'd say a Republican President was worse than Hitler, or that US soldiers were like Nazis
Lol, like republicans are any better. At their speeches, democrats are all cowards and progressives are all traitors who want americans to die to please their muslim overlords. One Senator demanded that a comedian be executed for a joke, if nothing else, at least the democrats aren't in a position to make good on their threats. And their treatment of McCain, who stood up for the tortured having been tortured himself was beyond despicable.
At least they quit pushing their "values" ads, now that we know that those values were just words on a TV to them.
The public schools should provide uncensored Internet access, as should any other publicly funded institution.
Political agendas and personal biases are inevitable when it comes to definitions of arbitrary terms such as "hate", "offensive" and "indecent". The fundamental motivation in restricting the government's ability to suppress speech(The First Amendment) was to make sure that the government could NOT ban speech just because it doesn't happen to be "popular".
Parental rights you say? Parents should be aware of the fact that the schools don't censor free speech, and have the right to say that Junior may or may not access the Internet at school. They're free to censor whatever they want at home.
The only people I hate are the people that hate freedom.
...of Heckler's_veto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler's_veto Which if the speaker planned ahead and had photos of the faces, license plates, and video taken of the event, could have resulted in federal civil rights charges being filed against the scooter-dudes for violation of the speaker's right to freedom of speach in the United States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_ the_United_States
Remember the next time you have something to say and you get shouted down it is because "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"
Endorsing repressive tactics is oh so tolerant and open minded.
I have mod points but just posted earlier in the discussion.
How the hell do you classify "save the trees" as "militant"?
o nt
& q=vandalism+equipment+logging
r el=url2html-18932http://www.nbc4.tv/news/2424749/d etail.html>
e l=url2html-18932http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-t errorism>
You know the save the animals group that threatens to kill animal researchers' kids, torches their cars and once stole the corpse of research lab owner's Aunt in Great Britain to hold hostage until they closed up shop?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Liberation_Fr
They are closely related to the people that do things like the stuff in these articles.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8
ahref=http://www.nbc4.tv/news/2424749/detail.html
ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-terrorismr
Nope no violent "SaVe hte treess" militants there
This is about "hate speech". Speech that vilifies people and advocates violence against them. You'll find some idiot spouting violent threats on any and every issue (just look at any usenet thread longer than 40 posts), that hardly justifies blocking the entire topic.
And IYAO ALF and other enviomental terror groups don't, as you put it, use "(s)peech that vilifies people and advocates violence against them"?
As a part of what most people would probably call "the religious right" I have to disagree with you, here. Homosexuals are free to share their views. I just don't want them forced upon me through political action. If sex is such a private matter, why is there such an "in your face" element to it?
Constitutionally Correct
I can't tell which tribes this guy is supposed to represent. Some were native to the Southwest US and some were not. But if he is descended strictly from Aztec or neighboring tribes, then he'd be just as much an interloper in the US as anyone else who descends solely from people outside the US. And certainly not "here" first. I don't know the context of this image. But if it's being applied to the US immigration debate, then being native in Mexico doesn't mean anything in the States. Nor IMHO should it.
There's a lot to be said for being civil, but "political correctness" goes way beyond being civil. It's a political ideology that says of certain things "this is good" and therefore "things that contradict it are bad."
There are special groups of people whose values "ought not" to be questioned. If you criticize them, you must hate them.
The worst part about PC, is that it labels anyone who disagrees with its ideologies as irrational, and pre-judges their motives as hate.
Homosexuality is a good example in our current political environment. School kids are being taught that homosexuality is normal and healthy. There was no intelligent cultural discussion on this topic, it was simply asserted, and anyone who disagreed was pre-judged to hate homosexuals, or worse yet, to be afraid of them ('homophobic'). I'm not trying to start a homosexuality flame war. I'm pointing out the lack of an environment that fosters rational criticism in both directions, and I think the blame is shared.
Any ideology that labels all those who disagree with its conclusions as irrational will at best produce irrational proponents of its own philosophy in the majority of its constituents.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
Quit splitting hairs and jumping to conclusions.
Anyway, you talk about the ALF. We were talking about TREES. The "A" in ALF stands for Animal. There is a slight difference.
You asked how "save the trees" could be construed as militant. The "save the tress" meme is getting polluted with speech and actions of people that espouse less peaceful views than yours. I agree ALF is not a perfect example of militant environmentalism.
Yes, ALF is the "Animal Liberation Front"; however, in the US Pacific Northwest they burned logging company trucks, filled bulldozer's crankcase with sand and placed metal spikes in trees with the intent of maiming timber men trying to cut those trees. Why did ALF do this? Their intent was "to save the trees!" and hence protect the animals living in those trees, like the spotted owl.
That's the kind of site your blanket ban would catch. That's why I'm annoyed at people who like to use the word "ecoterrorist" to dismiss peaceful protestors.
Get a clue.
I admit I gave you an imperfect example of how the shop worn phrase "save the trees" could be considered militant but now you imply I'm for banning web sites and infringing on your God given right to protest. Please cite anywhere I condoned or approved banning any web site?
You have made an assertion not supported by the facts in evidence. You have failed the reading comprehension portion of the test.
NO I'm not for banning anything. I believe firmly in the right to free speech. Freedom of speech is an unbridgeable right implicit to the human condition and endowed in us by our creator. It is a requirement of a free and liberal society. Hate speech laws and most college speech codes infringe on free speech rights by allowing speech the majority disapproves of to be suppressed. Mob rule and shouting down speech you disagree with is wrong.
Any speech that doesn't advocate violence or cause unjustified panic should be allowed. It is you who need to get a cue!
You just cited TubeSteak (669689)
CAN YOU READ ENGLISH?
SHOULD I TYPE SLOWER SO YOU CAN READ IT BETTER?
I am BobBoring (18422) and I say again Please cite anywhere I condoned or approved banning any web site?
And I repeat you seem have failed the reading comprehension portion of the exam.
Diversity of Censorship is a *great* phrase to define this ideal. In the interest of pushing back against censoring systems simply insulating people in their existing worldviews, I'd suggest a feedback loop inferred *from* one's filterset *to* a dimension on a repute score. (If the current threats to privacy and speech freedoms continue to bear down on us, pseudonymous repute systems will become increasingly necessary and ubiquitous.) Within most contexts (be they conversational or transactional), I only need to know one or two things about someone to figure out if I want to interact with them. On eBay it might be their feedback score; on /., it might be their karma. In political discussions, I'd love to know -- in addition to their philosophical leanings -- how narrow the set of ideas is that they're willing to expose themselves to. If they're willing to disclose that sort of thing about themselves, I'd probably be more likely to take them seriously & consider their opinions carefully.
In a connected world, there's always tension between privacy and robustness of interaction. Pseudonymity plus a secure, historied, addressable repute system that allows for granular disclosure preferences would be helpful on a lot of fronts. Secure pseudonymity can, e.g., reduce some of the tensions between Wikipedia and Tor (if the former would wake up to that fact, anyway). It permits people to engage in anonymous political speech without sacrificing authority (provided they've invested the time in building up some karma for one of their personnae). And assuming repute systems become more robust right along with recommendation engines, why not have the option of disclosing your openness to others' ideas along with your payment speed, shipping speed, insightfulness, etc.?
Pi Ran Out
I wish these people would kill each other off
So, basically, you're saying the Oreo throwing didn't happen. But, um, they, or other people who probably have something to do with them have done other really bad things, so that makes it okay for the Republican governor to lie.
I urge people to read the Daily Kos link provided therein. Steele says he saw one Oreo roll to his feet, Schurick says they were 'thick in the air like locusts'. But, hey, read the stories as they appear here. It's interesting as the incident got worse and worse over two weeks.
In short, it looks like some idiot passed out Oreos outside. And...well...that's actually the whole story. Apparently it wasn't enough for the Republicans, so they made up people viciously hurling cookies at the stage.
Now, here's the sixty-four thousand dollar questions: Which is worse behavior: Some unnamed and misguided possibly-Democratic activist calling a black Republican an 'Oreo' with visual aid, or Republican governor lying about the incident to make it seem a lot worse than it was. I don't know about you, but in every crowd there's an idiot or two, but I expect elected officials not to lie. (Granted, he wasn't elected at the time.)
But this is pretty much general Republican behavior. Find the looniest and most offensive person on the left they can, exaggerate their behavior, and ascribe it to the entire party as a general position. (Why they have to exaggerate the behavior I don't know. Maybe people have figure out that crazy paint-throwing-on-fur people aren't really representive of the party, so they have to pick more sane people.)
Meanwhile, Republicans distance themselves as much as possible from what are basically mouthpiece of their party, so when they say offensive things like 'We should invade their countries and convert them to Christianity', well, obviously that's not the official position of the Republican party.
But, hey, I hereby officially apologize on behalf of the Democratic Party for the offensive Oreo reference made by some random person you've assumed is a Democrat. (Hey, if some random person's behavior is attributable to the Democratic party, mine is too, and thus I can apologize for them.)
Now, you apologize for my asshole neighbor, who has made quite a few offensive comments about Hispanic citizens lately, going so far as to suggest we should arrest Hispanic citizens who were born here and lived here all their life and send them 'back' to Mexico. He's a Republican, so, you know, you're responsible for his opinion, apparently.
Until you apologize for him, shut the fuck up about what some random 'Democrats' do.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I've always viewed hate speech as when it's against an identifying group that are either engrained or unchangable. For example, blacks cannot be non-black (except Michael Jackson), nor Mexicans non-Mexicon (or not of said decent) and many religions/cultures are rather unchangable. Political learning may be more of a choice depending on viewpoint, which is why I suppose I find speech against racial, gender, sexual or disabled groups most irritating.