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Thousands Marched Against Censorship
funfail writes "Thousands of Turkish demonstrators poured into central Istanbul yesterday to protest against the government's Internet censorship. New regulations from Turkey's Internet Technologies and Communications Authority set to come into effect on Aug. 22 will require Internet service providers to offer a choice of four filtering options: family, child, domestic or standard. Many websites are expected to be blocked as a result of the filtering measures."
I love how slashdot runs these "oh no! evil censorship" stories as if people around the world have the same values or customs as it relates to free speech or censorship.
The fact is that our Western norms doesn't make it the right one and people in more conservative or traditional countries in the world have a right to decide for themselves what is appropriate or not. Who knows if the Turkish demonstrators represent the majority or whether its just a small section of the population?
The fact is this should be none of the readers concern here. Leave these internal domestic matters to the Turks or whoever else.
"Turkey's prime minister is threatening to sue over the recently released diplomatic cables on the website WikiLeaks. A cable written by former U.S. Ambassador Eric Edelman that alleged Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had eight Swiss bank accounts, struck a deep nerve."
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/europe/Turkish-PM-Threatens-to-Sue-Over-Wikileaks-Claims-111388889.html
That's what you get with democracy. People vote for things you don't agree with. If you don't like it, too bad. You still have to give them your tax money anyway.
At least the Turkish government is taking responsibility for the censorship. Here in the UK, the Internet Watch Foundation basically has a free hand to censor the internet; the IWF has the blessing of the government, but it's not a government agency, so there's no parliamentary oversight, they're not required to answer to anybody as to what they blacklist, and unless they fuck up spectacularly, nobody actually knows what they're censoring. We just have to hope it's only actually nasty kiddie porn, but as the aforementioned fuck up illustrates, their judgement is open to question. Our government likes it this way because technically the government isn't censoring anything.
Oh no... it's the future.
Reading about it, if you don't make a selection then you are in the "standard" filter, which is the same a what is currently available. However some sites are currently already blocked so would continue to be blocked in the "standard" package.
The guy pushing this, there is also some disagreement over if it is constitutional is doing on the basis that the free market has failed in this and the government needs to make sure that the filter options are provided and followed.
Says the anonymous coward - I hope you were going for massively ironic. On a side note, around a million people in the UK (with a population of only circa 60m) marched against the war in Iraq. The government of the time took zero notice. If a supposedly progressive western government can ignore the protests of such a huge gathering of its populace on such a massively important topic as going to war, what makes you think any government is going to listen to "thousands" complaining about an internet rating system? I applaud their effort, I just think it will more likely than not fall on deaf ears.
will require Internet service providers to offer a choice of four filtering options
First, horrible word choice, such a nice green eco-policy of filtering clean spring water into crystal clear bottled water, or filtering sewage before pouring it into the noble savage wilderness. Instead of what it really is, which is top down totalitarian thought-crime enforcement.
Second, how? From a technical standpoint, I'm thinking segregate by mac address into certain ip pools, which then are censored by customized BGP feeds? Coming from an ISP background, I'm momentarily mystified about how I'd do it. Of course the way they'll PROBABLY do it, is postal mail one of 4 CDROMs to each subscriber containing MS windows only, MSIE only, censorship and keylogging and govt reporting and govt backdoor software, hopefully leaving mac / i-device / linux users completely and utterly alone...
family, child, domestic or standard
Whats the difference? Its an interesting insight into turkish culture that they can market four different versions. Here the mainstream marketing model does not acknowledge its even theoretically possible to separate those four groups. At least here, its a doublespeak concept that family = child = standard, don't know that domestic is, but I'm guessing it would be some patriotic middle america theme as opposed to foreign like foreign cars which are bad, unlike all Chinese junk at a walmart which is good, or something vague like that.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Thank you. I wish I had mod points to vote you up. There are too many basement-dwelling Internet libertarians who think that posting shit on the Internet will change the world.
Folks, wanna see how to really change the world? Follow the example of the brave men and women who are literally putting their bodies on the line to oppose tyranny and injustice in the Middle East. Not the semi-literate, Jon Katz-reading retards who hang out on places like Slashdot.
Actually that's what you get when the elections are rigged and a vast social re-engineering project is attempted financed by the international forces to fit Turkey's population to their plans. And yes I'm from Turkey and I don't believe full democracy is in effect here for the last 8 years.....
Folks, wanna see how to really change the world? Follow the example of the brave men and women who are literally putting their bodies on the line to oppose tyranny and injustice in the Middle East
Nice ideal, but that change is still only happening when The Powers That Be in the West actually support the uprising. Witness the difference in fortunes between the West-supported Libyan rebels and the those in Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria.
== Jez ==
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Watch what you say, or they will be calling you a radical, a liberal, fanatical a CRIMINAL.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"Thousands of Turkish demonstrators poured into central Istanbul yesterday to protest against the government's Internet censorship.
They did? I didn't hear anything about it.
Seriously, the BBC (in the UK) were very quiet about this happening, almost as if the BBC were censoring the news to show us populist garbage of football (soccer) results.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I agree, I mean if you can jump from a building and land on the piece of concrete you want to get rid of is your way of tackling a problem... then by all means, die to the bullet.
Unfortunately, you have to be alive to continue the fight.
Remember that guy that flew his plane into the IRS building?
Yeah... that protest went far... ppffttttt.
Democracy is not about just just the majority deciding(as your comment incline). If 90% of US voters decided that is legal to kill someone just because they looked funny in your direction, that wouldn't make it a democracy, or if they voted that only professed Christians can hold any job. Democracy is about preserving your rights against the tide of the majority. - Or that's how I see Democracy.
Well, in my opinion (take what that is worth) once monarchy started getting too much resistance, the rich got together and decided to create a government that was almost as easy to game, yet still gave the people an illusion their voice was important. Even if it meant sometimes letting a few commoners get into their club, that was a compromise the wealthy were willing to accept. So as long as the right representatives get elected, things like censorship happen and it is just accepted it as the "will of the people"
Actually, that's pretty much how pure democracy works-- which is why the Constitution was written to form a republic, which does a better job of protecting the rights of the minority.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Unfortunately, that's not how democracy works. If 90% of the US voters decided it was legal to kill someone for whatever reason and then congress had a 90% vote to change the law to make it legal, then nothing would stop them from making it so. Because "Murder" is not listed in the constitution as something that must be prevented. It's assumed, but not stated.
Even if it was stated, with a 90% of the population, an amendment could be made to make it allowable.
In a democracy, a sufficiently large majority will take charge and decide everything, thus there must always be a balance to how big the majority is allowed to get.
So were the rights of the poor western Pennsylvania farmers being protected when Hamilton enacted his excise tax on whiskey in 1791? Or how about those wonderful Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798? Seems to me like the Constitution never really did what was expected of it...
Seems the Constitution usually did what was expected of it by those who read the document.
Let me point out that the protest was against existing arbitrary censorship as much as it was about the new 4 "filter packages" (child, family, .tr only, standard - you have to pick 1) that are to be introduced in August.
Already there are estimates of 80000 websites censored - estimated because the list is not made public, nor the reason for censoring. Typically, the targetted sites are around : porn (ALL porn, though they like to wave around child porn as an excuse), atheism (dawkins banned), communism, homosexuality (gay dating sites banned), kurdish nationalism, streaming sites (especially if live streams of a large pay tv channel are infringed), gambling-betting (the state sanctioned sport betting service runs full force ofcourse) and many others. One offending blog or clip can get entire domains banned (wordpress, youtube, etc. were at some point banned too).
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
if what you don't like brings terror, the creator is a terrorist. republicans are my terrorist.
Not all their names were released.
Invenio via vel creo
Turkish Goverment declared that filtering will be an OPTION!, it will not be a must for everyone.
It's not the optional filters we're protesting, it's the censorship.
This is what every parent will need to protect their children for porn, fundamental, and terrorism related sites. If you want unfiltered service you'll connect to site of ISP and set to unfiltered. For example if your child is on the internet, connect and set to child profile. That is it!
Please look at http://www.guvenliweb.org.tr/index_eng.php for information.
WHAT information? Have you /seen/ that site? I can read both English and Turkish and there's no relevant information there, unless you mean the SOP along the lines of "we're here to protect the children and the teenages." Also, how do you know how the filtering is going to be implemented, maintained and used?
I smell something along the lines of "Oh look, they're saying something about us on Slashdot. Hey, you know English. Go defend us before lunch." here.
Turkey is going to an election this summer. These news related with cencorship are distorsion of opposition political parties....
I'm... not quite sure what you mean here, but I'm guessing "it's all political?" Damn right, it is. And it will continue to be, as long as political parties continue to suppress or refuse to defend our freedom.
As a Turkish citizen (not so proud of these days with the current ruling party), it really scares the living sh. out of me. Their belief is so fu.ed up, and they want to impose their f. up beliefs to everyone else. Today, one can not freely express himself in daily communications. Everything is getting censored, books not published gets collected. Lots of modern thinkers, politicians, columnists are in jail, just because they don't share the beliefs of the ruling party. Even a very childish site like 4chan.org is blocked, I don't know since when. One can not talk freely nowadays, they even adjusted the Justice system just like they wanted. I am even scared now while writing this nonsense on slashdot, fearing a college or a client will read what I am writing because there is also something called Neighbor Bullying in Turkey now, in which people will bully you cause you don't share their beliefs. I hope they will lose in the upcoming election, but it is a very small chance.
"Being inspired by the movement, law makers, looking for support of the initiative, went to contact those who marched. However, they were unable to do so because the names were censored and blocked."
Hmmm. Drat. That sounded better in my head.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.