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."

Comments

Who Cares?? Its None Of Our Business

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Who Cares?? Its None Of Our Business

[paiute]

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.

Bull crap.

The freedom we enjoy in the US means nothing in the end if we ignore oppression elsewhere.

I'm tired of religious despots. I'm fed up with tribes who circumcise infant girls. I'm real fucking annoyed with honor killings. I have come to the conclusion that there are some traditions and cultures that need to die out sooner rather than later, and I'm willing to apply the necessary explosives to make it happen.

Re:Who Cares?? Its None Of Our Business

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm fucking tired with the death penalty in your country, you're DMCA notices to the whole world, your human-violation rights in your outside US prisons, your pseudo-freedom-of-speech, and a lot of other bulshit.
So fucking what?!!!

Re:Who Cares?? Its None Of Our Business

[camperdave]

. I have come to the conclusion that there are some traditions and cultures that need to die out sooner rather than later, and I'm willing to apply the necessary explosives to make it happen.

Ah! So it's okay for Americans to force their beliefs on people, but not for others. What god gave you that divine right?

Re:Who Cares?? Its None Of Our Business

[1s44c]

And I'm fucking tired with the death penalty in your country, you're DMCA notices to the whole world, your human-violation rights in your outside US prisons, your pseudo-freedom-of-speech, and a lot of other bulshit.

And the way they double tax their own citizens when they try to better themselves by working outside their borders. And the way they get involved and mess around in every international and many national disputes everywhere. And the crazy way they try to force their export regulations on companies all over the world. And don't even get me started on their excessive eating whilst large amounts of the world are starving.

The US is about as messed up as the rest of the world. Paiute is an ignorant xenophobe.

Re:Who Cares?? Its None Of Our Business

[dkleinsc]

I'm tired of religious despots. I'm fed up with tribes who circumcise infant girls. I'm real fucking annoyed with honor killings. I have come to the conclusion that there are some traditions and cultures that need to die out sooner rather than later, and I'm willing to apply the necessary explosives to make it happen.

I'm not willing to try to solve those problems with explosives when there are far better ways available. Compare, for instance, the conditions in Iraq (where heavy explosives were employed to oust a despot) to the conditions in Egypt (where a popular uprising ousted a despot): Things aren't perfect in Egypt, but you don't have thousands of people getting shot regularly. Similarly, if you want to go after female circumcision and honor killings, the best way to do that is to empower women to organize themselves and stand up against the men of their culture.

The basic method here is:
1. Give the people the knowledge that they're oppressed. That means getting Al Jazeera in there (because they regularly do investigative pieces on the leadership in that area), it means giving them the best Internet access you can, it means creating Radio Free Middle East, and it means Wikileaks.
2. Give the people a viable alternative to tolerating the oppression. There are lots of ways of doing that, but so far the most successful ones seem to be mass protests. It's far from a 100% success rate, but if they succeed they have the advantage of reducing the chance that the evil despot is replaced by another evil despot.

At least they're up-front about it

[Tx]

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.

Re:At least they're up-front about it

[Bogtha]

ISPs aren't required to implement the IWF blacklist unless they want to provide services to the government. Individuals are free to use an ISP that doesn't implement the blacklist, such as AAISP.

Re:The 3 packages are optional.

[nusuth]

There used to be a very primitive way of enforcing blocking of sites: ttnet DNS's were not correctly resolving names. This lead to public aphaty on censorship issue, as anyone and their dog knew how to use alternate DNSes or if all else fails, TOR. The prime minister himself said "I can access the banned sites, you can too." The blocked site list (which must be constructed by internet users, as there is no transparency about the process at all) is absurdly long but most didn't care - they didn't even notice. Most sites are banned without a court order (not that those banned on court orders are more sensible) and on grounds of "obscenity" defined by middle aged religious conservative bureaucrat men. Now that the institutions, mechanisms and laws are in place, they are making the next step: trying to bypass filters becomes a crime. Moreover ISP passwords will be tied to RW ID, so you will use the same login if you are the same guy. No, thanks. Current situation is less than ideal, but the proposed one is a disaster.