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Ireland May Be Next To Censor the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Irish Times, the government of Ireland — the country that recently made blasphemy a criminal offense — has had extensive talks regarding the censorship of the Internet. Details are a little sketchy, as the documents requested under the Freedom of Information request were denied; however, '...the ongoing high level of discussion on the subject is indicated in the detailed description of each refused item in the list of materials returned by the [Department of Justice].' Ireland seems to be following the well-trodden path blazed by the Land Down Under, justifying censorship with 'won't somebody think of the children!' (and the copyright holders)."
Goodbye Internet, it was nice knowing you.
Hello Web 3.0.
I think that FSM and other "religions" that rely on the internet to "spread the good word" would be in all rights able to get this law struck down on some sort of trumped-up blasphemy charge.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Now how the hell am I supposed to get me some Irish girl porn? =(
And I suppose that the punishment to speaking against God will be stoning to death?
So what happens to all the citizens of Ireland that do not believe in God? I would guess that practicing any other religion is considered blasphemy...
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I'm Irish, and at the rate this country is falling apart, they'll be nobody left here to access the internet in a few years. This is typical of the current Irish government, faffing about with silly non-existant problems, while failing to tackle the major problems like the economy, the collapse of the banking sector, the arse falling out of the property market, the child abuse scandal involving the catholic church, the alcoholism of the country, the violent crime thats becoming more prevalent etc. We're €81,000,000,000 in the red due to the cronyism of the banking and construction sector and this is what we waste our time with!
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
They're always trying to steal their Lucky Charms.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It is the duty of all those who value freedom of speech online to oppose censorship, however well intentioned it may be.
Each religion blasphemes the deities of the others, even in subtle ways. Muslims blaspheme Jesus Christ by denying his divinity to Christians. Christians blaspheme Yaweh in the eyes of the Jews by calling Jesus his son. Both blaspheme Allah in the eyes of the Muslim by most of their beliefs about Mohamed and their religious texts.
And I'm not kidding, I live here at the moment, although I come from mainland Europe. This country is backwards. Think 1940es style, backwards.
I dont know why that is, perhaps its the general repression during British rule, the famine, the isolation from europe, and the dominance of the catholic church, but its so conservative you wouldnt believe it. Women have to go on special ferries to get abortions in the UK - and they risk all kinds of hell if anyone reports it back home. I see teenage mothers all over the place and every day theres new details about the catholic church raping (literally) the entire society. And on top of that, the last 3 taoiseachs has been openly corrupt, and probably longer back than that.
Oh well, atleast the pubs are OK.
Ireland's new national campaign sticker:
The Internet: Not Magically Delicious
God doesn't need your help. He's a big God, and can take care of Himself. If someone insults Him online, don't you think He can deal with the offender as he pleases without your worthless help?
This is why, IMHO, one of the strongest tenets of true faith truly held is separation of church and state.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Anyone see the world slipping in to another dark ages, one country at a time? Sure, censoring the internet itself isn't worth getting that worked up over, but the motivation behind it and the goals that they home to achieve are nothing short of distressing.
How long before certain books are outlawed?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The problem is that no filtering system in use (or suggested by) any government anywhere in the world will stop the hardcore pedophiles from accessing their encrypted dark-nets and p2p networks where they get all their child porn from.
Show me a filtering system that even attempts to block the real sources of Child Pornography and maybe I will listen to governments trying to push it. :)
Until then, forget about it
obviously censoring the internet helps keep
citizens dumb.
obviously EDUCATING children is a bad thing.
Is anyone else totally not surprised that Ireland parent's don't want the responsibility of taking care of their children themselves and would rather have the government do it. This very type of legislature made me think Australians have no sense of personal responsibility for their children, and would rather have the government just fix the problem instead of actually using parenting skills.
The ultimate goal of censorship -- like every other expansion of government power -- is simply money. The idea of "moral standards", "hate speech", or "national security" are merely smokescreens for what they're really after: billions of dollars in revenue.
At the top of the power pyramid, as long as the money passes through your hands, you win. It doesn't matter where it goes, as long as it passes through your hands, giving you a chance to exploit it for personal gain.
Make no mistake, the primary effect of censorship will be to rake more tax dollars through the hands of the power elite. Every year government costs more, borrows more, and spends more, and yet (surprise) the quality of government only worsens over time. There's a reason why all governments cost more over time, and it sure ain't because governmets are getting better. It's because the more government costs to run, the more lucrative government is for the people who make their fortunes in the business of government.
There is one thing people from other countries--especially the US--really need to understand about Ireland.
In Ireland, we do not really have laws. What we have are more like customs.
Now, it's customary for the Dail (Parliment) to pass the odd few reasonable laws, and its customary for the population to--more or less--abide by them. It's also customary at times, for the sake of appearances or to placate foreign interests, for the Dail to pass unreasonable, unpopular or at times ludicrous laws (e.g. blasphemy). On such occasions, it's customary for the population(and indeed the State) to completely ignore the laws as they are passed.
If you want an example of this, there's a story in the same newspaper about Ireland's oldest gay bar, which opened while homosexuality was still actually illegal in the country. While it may have been illegal, no one was actually going to waste their time dealing with it.
Despite this however, I imagine that internet censorship will eventually be implemented in Ireland as it has been in the UK and Australia, and in Saudi Arabia and China. The technologies developed by the west to oppress those in other countries are being turned back on its own apathetic populations. We've only ourselves to blame.
May the Maths Be with you!
Irish people, consider yourself mocked by me.
Here in the USA I keep hearing about how the Irish economy boomed after taxes were cut to the bone to 'encourage business'. What say you?
Blar.
Sadly, it doesn't work this way in the US. Once the absurd laws are passed, the fat and stupid "salt of the earth" enjoy trying to get victims prosecuted under those laws. While they bitch about the taxes they pay.
Blar.
There be too much content on the internet that doesn't involve drunken brawling.
It's about time the government did something about this.
The blasphemy law wasn't passed because we're against blasphemy, it's because we're lazy.
Someone in the Dail(parliament) read the constitution, saw that blasphemy was a crime but there was no punishment associated with it, this meant our constitution wasn't valid, so we needed to come up with a law quick.
Why didnt they just scrap the law? Because that would involve a re-evaluation of the constitution, which would mean we'd have to take out/re-word all the bits that's involve God, who is practically a main character in the irish constitution. Ireland isnt a purely Catholic country anymore and that stuff is incredibly outdated and often times non-sensical, so it would have to go. This would take forever to do and we're far too lazy to do it, so in the end they just made a BS law.
It's impossible to get fined/arrested based on it, you could wheel around a statue of Moses made out of bacon while dressed as the one true, homoerotic Christ and nothing would happen, apart from a few funny looks.
In essence, the blasphemy law is a dirty hack to make the Irish constitution work.
Well it's not really that surprising. When the free state was founded there was a serious attempt to ban foreign music in this country, currently internet and phone records can be seized by the Gardi(Irish police) and the Army without a warrant and we have a long and vibrant history of censorship. They don't even keep a record of how many times the army seizes records. In the first year of having these powers the Gardi seized 10,000 records yet not a single case was forwarded to the DPP as a result. This latest proposal is just what I'd expect from the idiots running this country. By extension most of this country are idiots because they keep voting them back in no matter how corrupt, incompetent (nobody does incompetent like the Irish government) or plain stupid they are.
This latest measure comes from a minister for justice who doesn't live in that place we like to call planet earth and spends most of his time holidaying in fairyland, he has enacted a number of knee jerk laws and measures simply to appeal to public opinion in the most reckless and ethically bankrupt manner.
One might say, ah well at least he's not flying around in the state helicopter to open off licenses in small towns. No he's not, that'd be the minister for health.
We need to dissolve our entire government and start again.
So I would basically last about 3 minutes in Ireland before being locked up. Look, I had a lovely dinner, and all I said was "that piece of halibut was fit for Jehova."
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
But all I said to my wife was "That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah!"
Fuck the pope! Let's see you censor that, you Fenian bastards!
So many governments want to censor. What interests me, though, is that most of them want to censor differerent things.
I think one great way to handle this, would be to complain loudly about other countries' censorship (*something has to be done!") and be discretely silent about your own. We need to set things up so that those other counties' censorship has no chance of working and that there are not any possible means for it for be enforced, even with court orders. The fact that this could work both ways .. well, let's not talk about that until after it's implemented and too late to stop. ;-)
The opposite approach is for governments with really different outlooks and goals, to band together against all the people of the world. (We see a form of this with ACTA, but with limited (or is it?) scope.) The U.S. might not want to back Saudi Arabia's censorship policies and Germany might not want to back Ireland's, but they would have to do so in order to lock down speech enough to enforce their own censorship policy. If they go that way, then the thing for the people to do, is loudly rail on how their own government is implementing that other policy. Australians might be fanatically anti-sex, but the people ought to be talking about how their government is fighting blasphemy (Ireland's values). Ireland might be fanatically anti-religious-freedom, but they ought to be talking about how their government is fighting political expression (Germany's values). And so on. Keep using the other guy's weirdo hangups to show the absurdity of your own guy's hangups, because your own guy's hangups seem so reasonable and popular, locally. Don't let 'em get away with it.
So, as a US guy, I say, "go Ireland!" My government will either now have to help us build an uncensorable internet, or else they are violating the 1st amendment by backing Ireland. Thank you, Ireland.
Anne McCaffrey wasn't happy enough with sending out Jay Katz just to hound the fans that posted dragonrider drawings...! Moreta save us all!
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
Smite me! Almighty Smiter!
Blasphemy?! What next, burning witches? These people call themselves a modern, western society? Primitive, superstitious a**holes is more like it. I guess Tom Lehrer is gonna be banned: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f72CTDe4-0
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
I use the internet to order liquor you insensitive clod !
"the documents requested under the Freedom of Information were denied"
Isn't that phrase kind of an oxymoron? Or do oxymora have to be nouns?
The problem is the principle. The lack of ineffectiveness is only one of the jewels in that crown of total failure.
lack of ineffectiveness
Note to self: proof-reading is not for chumps.
There are always self-righteous people setting their moral standards above everyone else and punishing those that disagree with them... This site is no exception with its despicable Taliban censors modding anyone they dislike or disagree with.
Dear
i have a court order that tells me to not think of any children...
What would you expect from a regime that protects the international paedophile ring, sometimes known as the Catholic Church, and bans people from criticising their fundamentalist dogma?
I'm ashamed to live on the same planet, and be (broadly) the same species as these people. Their behaviour is far more primitive than even the most untamed beast.
Ah,Blasphemy. The ultimate victimless crime.
Censorship, on the other hand ...
Again, the religious community sacrifices the moral to protect the orthodox.
Does the government of Ireland rise up from the floor of the pub and actually make laws? If so why?
One word: whitelisting.
Dilbert RSS feed
Just the ads with Vikings in them. What's in your (meat) wallet?
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
Goes something like this:
Fuck you, you morons! It ain't gonna work. If I have to help organize a national and community driven proxy service, I will (I know a lot of ISP admins).
And then encouraging not only all Irish people but every interested person in contacting those responsible for such matters to inform them of our displeasure and the inane stupidity of the idea:
http://www.oireachtas.ie/members-hist/default.asp?housetype=0&HouseNum=29&disp=mem
I have run, though unsuccessfully, for public office, including the Dail (our parliament), and will again. And I sure as hell will encourage my fellow citizens to squash thus idiocy.
Bloody hell, sometimes I'm disgusted with our government. Crooks and eedjits the lot of them. I'm sorely tempted to try to exhaust my vast knowledge of expletives.
science in government
We are aware of this, and are trying as hard as possible to boot the bastards out in the face of 1950s-era politicans and the lunatic religious fanatics in the civil service. Sincerely, The people of Ireland.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
See subject above, rotflmao.