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Web Censorship Proposed For Norway
Aqwis writes "A Norwegian Web filtering system (link in Norwegian), comparable to the Great Firewall of China, has been proposed to the Norwegian legislature. It would, if enacted, block all Web sites and servers that contain hate material (racial hate, pro-Nazi sites, hate towards the government, etc.), most kinds of pornography (not only child pornography), foreign gambling sites, and sites that share copyrighted or other material that it is not legal to share (such as most BitTorrent sites and services such as LimeWire). Reactions have been mixed; however they are mostly negative."
that the supply of idiots eager to babysit me and legislate morality isn't only confined to the US and China.
Before you get your Slashdot panties in a twist and get offended, note, I'm a libertarian (note the case) and can't stand the damned conservatives. They are as bad as our liberals, just intolerant of other things. With these two, we can't say a damned thing.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Yet another poor deluded soul, given the choice of only left or right, he lashes out at whichever he's told by his peers to hate.
Here starts the slipperly slope of freedom of speech to criticize the government.
Another government passing an idiotic and unenforcable law! I can't wait for another pack of politicians ready to make utter and complete asses of themselves.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
In the U.S., you say somethings and you get yourself fired, thrown out of office, ridden out on a rail, decertified what have you:
This post will be censored in Norway, but so will anyone who tries to argue the opposite of any one of these points. Is that freedom?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
It was only a matter of time before a Western nation tried this. It is interesting that the press are not censored but instead adhere to self-imposed commandments of caution ("Vær Varsom-plakaten"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway#Politics So now they wouldn't be blocking their own people from saying things but preventing any outside thoughts that were found disagreeable to find their way in. Or will this also go to cover the "hate towards the government" expressed by Norwegians themselves? And just how will such things like "hate towards the government" be determined? Will any discussion of a dislike of the governments actions be blocked, or will it be limited to blatant hate that threatens bombs and assignations? Lets just hope the US never tries that, or have they already?
First, there is another government that thinks they can regulate the Internet. We know that is stupid, but more importantly, they believe they can regulate the dissemination of hate speech. We might as well ban megaphones now. Worse than regulating the Internet, this is an attempt (seemingly) to regulate thought and speech. Can we all agree on how that will work out. Next thing you know Reporters Without Borders will be reporting on this story.
There is way too much in the world to worry about besides what people view on the Internet. Lets not forget that it is the parents responsibility to ensure their kids don't torture animals, bully other kids, and learn a set of spiritual values.
I am (mostly) a libertarian, but despite political leanings, I cannot fathom any political faction believing that it is their responsibility to remove all possible danger from the lives of citizens as to provide a blanket of security and safety for them. When ANY government feels this is their responsibility, it is high time to execute that government and move on to the next version.
This is not so much an example of stupid government as it is a call for the citizens of that country to impeach and behead the leaders of that government... in any order that seems appropriate at the time.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Unless I'm mistaken, Norway was the third or so country to be linked up to Internet, and has always been ahead of most other countries, both with understanding technology and using it for the benefit of the people. It would be a shame if Norway now is caught up in the neocon puritanism enough to implement something like this. Let's hope it's just a proposal from some radicals that won't have a chance of ever passing their house? senate?
This post will be censored in Norway
...doesn't. How's that PATRIOT act working out for y'all?
That's so clueless I'm going to go ahead and assume you're an American here. I'm also going to point out that Norway consistently ranks in the top five in various agencies' ratings of press and speech freedom. The United States
toresbe
Actually, you have some of this wrong. Censoring for pornography and language is a conservative/neocon thing. Censoring for offensive ideas/language is a liberal thing. At least, thats the break down in the U.S.
Between the two camps, we are losing our freedoms.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Yeah .. because it's of course very sound reasoning to generalize from one story about a policy under discussion in a single European (non-EU) country to a "US vs. Europe" comparison.
In short, they want to block everything with hate (hey, my private server would be blocked!),
and everything else resolving to the same IP-address. So if you want to get the competition
shut down, and they use a shared webhost, just buy cheap space from the same provider
and post something really, really nasty. What is considered nasty? Well, that's up to them to
decide. For the good of the people.
Hate: Any text we don't like!
No, I think he is thinking of Denmark. It's in the same neighbourhood and was the first western country to (re-)legalize porn.
The lack puritanism is what distinguish Denmark from the two other Scandinavian countries, Sweden and Norway.
Ok! I am Norwegian and I just want it t be known that a _minority_ within this commiitee, which is composed of old and wery conservative people, is proposing this bill and just to inform you, there is no chanse in hell that this will ever make it past the Storting (Congress).
It is a shame that when a a comittee is called upon to make a statement on something like the internet there are never any young people included. I am now 22 years old, internet has been a part of my life since I was 10 (and even more so for my 11 years old sister). I can tell these old guys and researchers so much about online culture, society, human interaction and etiqette that they will never ever get to know or learn because internet will always be something "new" and foreign in their life, not something that has been there from the beginning.
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
I happen to be a Norwegian, and i find this proposal quite shocking. I am posting under the guise of an anonymous coward to prevent, well... *looks nervously over shoulder*
Lets have a look at the press freedom ranking of countries, as published by Reporters Without Borders: Norway is currently _sixth_ of the 168 countries in the ranking. We certainly like to think of ourselves as a relatively free, happy and prosperous country. Now, this proposal would make us take a plunge past the USA at 56, and position us in the neighborhood of other, well, insidious and suppressive dictatorships like say Iran, China, Cuba, Libya, and North-Korea. No fun and very very bad national PR.
I'm guessing the Norwegian Storting (parliament) would shoot such a proposal down on sight, but i mean. They shouldn't have to. Because this is just silly.
First, the technical solutions would never work in the slightest, given proxying, onion networks and what have you. The same circumvention tools used to communicate past government sensorship in China could be used in Norway. The _real_ badguys will always find away around things. In this case, with great ease.
Second, they propose blocking entire servers found to contain questionable content. Uhh... What about the racist / hateful comments on YouTube, or in the comments section of every Web 2.0 enabled commercial website and newspaper?
Huh? www.YouTube.com not available, reason: Illegal content, copyright violations, hate speech. I mean, seriously, every website with user generated content is liable for censorship, simply because a significant internet population have the intelligence of shit when it comes to online discussions.
This would apply to YouTube, MySpace and every major Newspaper.
In the comments section of this article at Dagbladet (The Newspaper containing TFA), this proposal evokes responses aligning the Norwegian government with Facists, Communists, Nazis, and every other notable censor you would care to mention, as well as comments telling the Govt. to go straight to hell.
Say this article had been posted with this proposal in action: ---> WWW.DAGBLADET.NO - This Website is not available. Reason: Illegal content, Hateful conspiracy against the Government. Your IP-adress has been forwarded to the Norwegian Computer Crime Commission. Have a nice day!"
If a website is to be blocked, the whole server will be cencored affording to the article. Talk about splash-effect.. This is just. I mean. Geez. Silly politicians.
There's lots more to be said about this, but i think i'll stop ranting now. Silly, stupid, wont work. Heck, I'm moving to Sealand.
BTW: Slashdotters will be interested to know that this proposal is beeing put forward by the Norwegian Computer Crime Comitte (My translation, might be inaccurate) - Established to fight Computer Crime after the criminal case against Norwegian DRM cracker Jon Johansen.
-The One called ToHa
Boobies and people fsucking = The source of life. Racism and violence = A source of death.
It is arguably the case, that pr0n damages relationships (since it tends to portray improbable and fantastic situations, depicting both men and women as sexual beings in an exaggerated or at least distorted manner, and potentially discourages people from solving their problems by using their brains, and probably tempts people to go outside the bounds of their relationships in the search for sexual satisfaction, which is a proven cause of relationship breakdown). We also know what sexual portrayals (porn or whatever) do to people's spending habits - the pressure to perform sexually is one of the most potent and pervasive of the human traits utilized in advertising. Television itself does much of this without any pr0n.
Banning porn on the other hand is plain stupid, and merely increases its attractiveness, like banning alcohol or anything else. The best way to tackle porn is to make it totally free, thereby crippling the business model for the industry. Same approach would work to fix the moguls in the music industry - force people to make money from performance, and not publication of their music. So what if nobody would publish anymore for money!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Stuff like the PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo and the like are horrible and should be gotten rid of, but speaking in relative terms they really aren't that bad.
I don't know enough about the PATRIOT act to speak for or against it, but I'm sorry, no: Guantanamo Bay is absolutely inexcusable. It really is that bad.
We're still an extraordinarily free society...
Actually, you're far below par for the course in Europe. You do seem to enjoy talking about it the loudest, though.
toresbe
If you're doing any kind of business over the internet, even just hosting a site, wouldn't it be wise to just spend the extra $3.95 (price from my shared hosting provider) for the dedicated IP address? If you're really worried about some IP getting blocked, then I don't think $4 is really going to take a big bite out of your budget.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Look, you make some very good points, and I commend you for them, but god is your post hard to read. Maybe it is just me, but I find it downright painful; everything just runs together forcing me to read it more slowly than normal. A few extra seconds using the shift key and punctuation would save many minutes of total time of readers who are slowed down trying to read it. Actually, your post is a great example of the selfishness you talk about: to save a little inconvenience on your end, you disregard the inconvenience to possibly hundreds of readers, with a negative net gain overall.
Suggestion: if you really can't be bothered to use the shift key, use the CAPS LOCK instead. That way the letters in your post will be bigger and easier to read, and you will get your point across more emphatically. Yes, I'm being sarcastic, but that is exactly how your post looks to me, except s/uppercase/lowercase/.
I don't know if you're trying to make some kind of "statement" with your "style," but IMHO it really detracts from the content of your post. Sorry.
Your mind isn't quite open enough.
Pornography depicts those "exaggerated" fantasy situations because those situations are, in fact, what people want to be able to do. People are constrained from doing those things not by nature but by fiat--you, and those like you, maintain the status quo simply because it is there, because at some point in the distant past, someone declared it to be so and some people were hoodwinked into agreeing.
Sex is not inherently evil--its only inherent feature is its capacity to unite people, and to make them feel good. If pornography causes the breakdown of traditional relationships, it is because traditional relationships do not reflect what humans actually want. Tradition has been wrong before; consider, at least, the possibility that it might be wrong now as well.
Ah... yet another "progressive" /. poster. If a person wants to go to a private "religious nutcase school like Liberty University," what exactly is your problem with that. The only thing that I can imagine is that you are upset by institutions which you probably don't have any connection to. It seems you would take away the choice of attending such a place because it is against your beliefs.
"The Norwegian populace doesn't exactly seem to be starving." And anyone who is not starving should give as much money as possible to the government, right? Everyone reading this should be aware that if you are not starving, you need to write a check to your government immediately. Just empty your bank account 'cause we all know that bureaucracy is synonymous with efficiency.
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
I grew up in San Francisco, but attended college in Alabama. As you might imagine, it took some time to get used to the degree of conservatism in the south east.
That's right children, it's always the conservatives who want censorship, and leftists who respect freedom of speech.
Keep people from realizing the tyranny inherent to both of the dominant ideologies, and soon everyone will be upstanding citizens.