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."

Comments

Re:Right

[Anonymous Coward]

If we block any obscene content, our people will become fine, upstanding citizens.

As obviously incorrect as it is, this is actually a common belief in the south eastern US.

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. After all, San Fracisco is a rather liberal place. When I grew up there in the 1970s, it was unusual for a day to go by when you didn't see a topless woman, some guy with his penis hanging out, or even a group of hippies performing their acts of "public love".

At first I wasn't sure if people in Alabama were serious or not. I'd hear people talking about how evil pornography was, and how if a girl even thought of a scrotum before she was 25, she'd be completely damaged for life. At some convenience stores, some of the religious people would throw the porno mags on the floor while the store owner was watching. It was actually quite strange to see how anti-sexual people in the south east US are.

I think I got a better understanding of how things really are there when I was in my final year of college. A couple of years before we had had one professor who was extremely against pornography, anal sex, homosexuality, and atheism. During my final year, there was a bit of a scandal involving that professor. It turns out that he had been caught with three other men sexually molesting a farmer's livestock and each other. So we had listened to him rant on against "sexual deviancy" day in and day out, only to find out that he one of the sickest bastards out there, completely contradicting everything he said and supposedly stood for.

the problem with selfishness

[circletimessquare]

is that if you watch a man fall, you will not stop to help him up. that if a man is dying of sepsis, you will not buy him 79 cents in antibiotics, that if a man is smart but can't afford an education, then you will deny him a future. etc

of course, it is absurd for me to suggest that altruism and selfishness cannot coexist at the same time, in the same person, in the same society. this is, in fact, what most modern western societies are like: capitalism with social safety nets, or socialism with a capitalist engine. but notice how the agenda of libertarians is to remove those social safety nets. that's interesting

what would happen without those social safety nets? you honestly can't imagine how they might be necessary, how they might, in fact, help you by removing the attractiveness of criminal acts that are sought after by the desperate? that is as actually cheaper to pay for the social safety nets then to pay for eventual negative effects of a growing poor underclass?

oh: you thought libertarianism would do anything except shrink the middle class?

sorry: selfishness compounds interest. what i mean by that is that, in a libertarian society, given a few generations, all power and money would be centralized in a handful of ultrarich. of course, libertarians say that their political philosophy is all about the little middle class man making it on his own, unburdened by the intrusions of a busy body government. what they don't understand is how their livelihood relies so much on those government hand outs, indirectly, they can't fathom seeing the worth for paying. this doesn't make a libertarian wiser, this makes him more shortsighted

the only people who gain from libertarianism is not the hardy backwoods souls. it is the ultrarich in the penthouses of the urban centers. it is amazing how libertarians cannot understand how selfishness concentrates wealth into societies of rich and poor, and destroys the middle class. the little middle class guy in the woods who supports libertarianism supports the impoverishment of his children and grandchildren so that the ultrarich can get even richer

which makes perfect sense, right? selfishness only cares about yourself... not the next generation

there is nothing wrong with what ayn rand said about the many and varied benefits of selfishness. but there is everything wrong with thinking that those positive aspects of selfishness, in a vacuum of altruistic efforts and benefits, does anything but consume that which it creates, and then some

life is balancing act on so many principles. when it comes to altruism and selfishness, especially

you must have equal parts both concepts in your political philosophy, or you have a political philosophy that only impoverishes and makes miserable

understand why both altruism and selfishness must be expressed in your political philosophy, or understand nothing at all