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Some Countries Want To Ban 'Information Weapons'
DrgnDancer sends in an NPR piece on recent efforts to control so-called "information weapons" on the Internet. What's interesting is that the term "information weapon," as defined by many of the countries trying to limit them, doesn't mean what you would think. It's closer to the old Soviet term "ideological aggression." "At a UN disarmament conference in 2008, Sergei Korotkov of the Russian Defense Ministry argued that anytime a government promotes ideas on the Internet with the goal of subverting another country's government — even in the name of democratic reform — it should qualify as 'aggression.' And that, in turn, would make it illegal under the UN Charter. 'Practically any information operation conducted by a state or a number of states against another state would be qualified as an interference into internal affairs,' Korotkov said through an interpreter. 'So any good cause, like [the] promotion of democracy, cannot be used as a justification for such actions.' The Russians, and a lot of other countries such as Iran and China, apparently consider the free exchange of information to be an information technology threat. One that must be managed by treaty."
If you don't want to hear of all the wonderful ideas the rest of the world has, stop using the communications medium they use to spread them. It is not the problem of modern nations to ensure your citizens are not exposed to ideas that you don't like. Be warned that some of them may object rather strongly when their own government rips it away from them.
So Germany isn't reunited, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Russia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic don't have free multiparty elections now?
The pushing of democracy in the Cold War, along with a healthy cultural push from film, tv, radio and music helped spur the end of one party rule in Eastern Europe.
So in effect what the Russian Minister said the VOA and BBC in the 60s through 90s was an act of aggression.
If that can be illegal under international law, we will slid quickly to ideological and religious islands with physical and idea walls around. It is censorship for sure. Not unlike the laws against circumventing content protection schemes. Thats illegal.. When I saw we had done that then I knew we were going to see more tightening and control of information, for profit and in this case for political control (well that is a different kind of profit that controls profit). Years before there were laws passed that made it illegal to listen in to certain radio frequencies or transmissions. That I think may have been one of the first steps in this control of information slide. They acually passed laws that Short wave radio's in this country could only tune to certain frequencies, but of course the fix to open that up to other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that bathes us all with its sunsine was easy and provided.
When will it stop, those that want to control and profit? Ya need to vote.
If this passes we'll finally GTFO of the UN.
There is a war going on for your mind.
You don't get it. If you say "I think that dogs shouldn't wear hats", I can say "PETA engages in violence and arson and thinks dogs shouldn't wear hats. Therefore any expression supportive of hatless dogs is implicitly supporting violence and arson and cannot be allowed." That sort of shit happens all the time in the UN, and all the time in opressive regimes. The very governments who would abuse this employ staffs of hundreds of very smart people who's only job is come up with a nearly reasonable interpretation of any statement such that it can be seen as breaking the rules. And since the decision will be inevitably be made on a political basis, not any sort of neutral basis (since we're talking about the UN), nearly reasonable is all that's needed.
This is the fundamental problem with allowing any sort of government to outlaw any sort of speech - it creates a weapon to be used by the people who judge the merits of speech to attack anyone who says anything. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him" wasn't theoretical, it was what Cardinal Richelieu did for a living.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.