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The Great Firewall of Canada
engtech writes "Canadian carriers Bell Aliant, Bell Canada, MTS Allstream, Rogers, SaskTel, Shaw, TELUS, and Videotron have all opted in to a blacklist, dubbed Project Cleanfeed Canada, provided by Cybertip.ca, the Canadian tip-line against child exploitation. The idea of having a national blacklist sends shivers down my spine. I'm a pessimist, I believe that any form of censorship will eventually be abused despite it's good intentions." Besides engtech's post on the subject, Dr. Michael Geist has some considered comments about this issue. From that post: "Critics are quick to draw parallels to Internet censorship in countries such as China. However, those countries involve state-based content blocking, with no transparency or legal recourse. In fact, several democracies — most notably Australia — have established limited blocking rules, while British Telecom, the UK's largest ISP, voluntarily blocks child pornography as part of its CleanFeed program. Even with various legal safeguards, many Canadians would undoubtedly find the blocking of any content distasteful. Yet to do nothing is to leave in place an equally unpalatable outcome that silences those would speak out against unlawful hate speech for fear of personal harm."
"several democracies - most notably Australia - have established limited blocking rules" completely untrue. the family first party of australia, a right wing christian fundamentalist group who unfortunately got a senator into our government was pushing a proposal, but nothing has been put into law or implemented to my knowledge.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
There is a substantial difference. You are perfectly free to walk around street-corners yelling about how much you hate the jews; but when you start yelling "SOMEONE SHOULD KILL THE JEWS" and their speech...
That's when they can be punished. Even when Canada did not have a written constitution or bill of rights, this speech was still protected extensively.
Hate speech is in fact legal. it is inciting violence which is not legal, and, to my knowledge, is not legal in the US either.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
When looking for a link, I was shocked to see a new development in this case: Yesterday the ISP in question announced that they decided not to appeal as they had announced they would, and all other major danish ISPs have started blocking allofmp3.com too.
You can read more about this in danish at Piratgruppen.
The court decision is available in PDF format in danish here, and I found an unofficial english translation of the conclusion of the court decision here.
Further analysis of the court decision in danish can be found here.