Slashdot Mirror
Activists Use Wikipedia To Test Aussie Net Censors
pnorth writes "Editors at Wikipedia have removed a link to a blacklisted web site that sat uncontested for over 24 hours in the main body of the Australian regulator's own Wikipedia entry. The link, which directs readers to a site containing graphic imagery of aborted foetuses, was inserted into ACMA's Wikipedia entry by a campaigner against Internet filtering to determine whether Australia's communications regulator had a double-standard when it came to censoring web content. The very same link motivated the regulator to serve Aussie broadband forum Whirlpool's hosting company with a 'link deletion notice' and the threat of an $11,000 fine. Last night, the link became the subject of 'warring' between several Wikipedia administrators in the lead up to its removal, with administrators saying they didn't want to be used to prove a point."
I think speech should be free, but seriously, how much worse off would we be if we didn't have breast feeding in public and demeaning of social groups?
Not very worse off at all.
But sadly there starts the slippery slope. If you give your government power over what speech is "hateful" or not, then it is they who decide just how hateful something must be.
Eventually, the more extreme politicians will have their say, and you'll soon find things that are not hateful on that list.
Then people become used to the idea of the list. Sooner or later someone comes along who wants to add their own little viewpoint in there without the "people" standing up and making a fuss. So the more extreme dissenters of government policy get quietly silenced. no one makes a fuss, after all, you've already banned the racists, homophobes and political extremists, so who will miss a few moaning greenpeacers or aclu-types. They could be dangerous, they stand up for terrorists after all. So dissent gets shut down and ever more extreme political power is yielded.
Do it all over society, as I believe is happening in the UK (protest is now illegal without permits, habeus corpus is suspended at will, it's illegal to say some things now), and you end up in a Police State.
I don't like the Neo Nazis. I'd rather they chose not to say what they say. But I will defend, to the death if needs must, their right to say it.
Someday, I might find myself the lone voice of dissension. I'd hope no matter what my views you'd stand up and support my right to say them.
Otherwise, one day *you* might be that lone voice...
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
I think speech should be free, but seriously, how much worse off would we be if we didn't have Nazi sympathizers and other hate mongers?
It is arguable that there are some materials so objectionable that ThePeople(tm) in a democracy could ask their governments to ban or restrict general access to them. But that is not the case here! This was meant to be a secret list, which means we have a (supposedly democratically elected) government acting without public oversight. This is to be tolerated only in the rarest cases when it strictly necessary (such as on some issues of national security). What the Australian government is proposing here is intolerable.
Hopefully the release of the list will serve to warn people about the potential scope of the secret list. And hopefully this will strengthen Sen. Xenophon's resolve (and perhaps pursuade some other cross benchers) to scuttle the enabling legislation in the Senate.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Cool down a notch or two there. I'm in Canada, and Wikileaks isn't loading either. Slashdot effect or other server problems, I expect.
The photos linked to in the article couldn't be really considered hate speech ... hate speech against whom? Not the fetuses, as the site is "pro-life". If publishing photos of dead fetuses is hate speech against pro-choicers then we may as well tear up free speech. (Technically the ACMA censors offensive images as well as hate speech, but still I don't consider the existance of such images offensive if they are not being waved in my face)
pro-free-speech admins = you're screwed
On a forum like Wikipedia I would propose that it would be (next to) impossible not to have admins that are not anti-censorship (all things being equal), because working on an encyclopedia demonstrates in interest and love of knowledge, whose antithesis is censorship. That's why Librarians are often advocates for free speech. It's not very surprising.