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Why French Govt's Attempt to Censor Wikipedia Matters
In the end, the Streisand Effect prevailed, as you might expect, when a French domestic intelligence agency apparently browbeat a French citizen into removing content from Wikipedia. The attention caused the Wikipedia entry on a formerly obscure military radio site (English version) to leap in popularity not only in French, but in languages where it was formerly far less likely to have been noticed at all. Lauren Weinstein makes the case, though, that this sort of move isn't just something to shrug at or assume will always end so nicely. "Even though attempts at Internet censorship will almost all fail in the end, governments and authorities have the capability to make groups' and individuals' lives extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even terminated — in the process of attempts at censorship, and equally important, by instilling fear to encourage self-censorship in the first place."
It doesn't. Wikipedia is located in the US. When the US government decides to censor Wikipedia, then it will matter (and Wikipedia will move someplace else).
that internet cannot be controlled. It is probably the last bastion of freedom (away ahead of Scandinavian democracies).
It's really pathetic watching neocolonial fanboys tear apart any non-western nation censoring anything yet always finding reason and righteousness when a Western government does it. If you are going to tout freedom and other ideological bs, at least maintain consistency.
A link to a blog post of someone who thinks the internets are special where anything goes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DA-Notice
Fear will keep them in line, for everything else, there's the Patriot Act, that is, until the Death Star becomes a reality.
A lie can make its way around the world before the truth can get its boots on. In our pre-distopia state, we're still dealing with Governments that think that blocking something is the best way to make it disappear. It won't be long though until they figure out that telling people lies that they want to believe is a far more effective way of burying the truth than redacting it. So enjoy the dumb governments, corporations, and political groups for as long as you can - because when your generation gets into the control seat, the bullshit isn't going to smell like bullshit, it's going to look and taste like sugar or bacon (choose appropriate tasty thing)
"Even though attempts at Internet censorship will almost all fail in the end, governments and authorities have the capability to make groups' and individuals' lives extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even terminated — in the process of attempts at censorship, and equally important, by instilling fear to encourage self-censorship in the first place."
Wikileaks comes to my mind
In soviet Russia they call it "innovations".
It would be nice if TFS included an explanation of who Laura Weinstein actually is, and why anyone should be interested in the views she writes on her amaterish-looking personal blog.
France and Russia are very different states indeed, but it's interesting that Russian Wikipedia had a similar incident recently. The Russian Wikimedia received a request from the government to remove the 'Cannabis smoking' article from Russian Wikipedia (see google-translated version). The request in an ultimate manner states that if the article won't be removed during 24 hours then 'the hosting provider is obliged to limit access to such website' (haha, hosting provider from USA?) and if the hosting provider refuses to do that, then 'the IP address of the website will be listed in a database of addresses to whish ISP's will limit access'. The request PDF is here.
If you look at the pictures, they were clearly trying to cover up the prime para-boarding location.
Let me quote from a blog post that paints an even darker picture than the original story I submitted on /.
DCRI summoned a Wikipedia volunteer in their offices on April 4th. This volunteer, which was one of those having access to the tools that allow the deletion of pages, was forced to delete the article while in the DCRI offices, on the understanding that he would have been held in custody and prosecuted if he did not comply. Under pressure, he had no other choice than to delete the article, despite explaining to the DCRI this is not how Wikipedia works. [...]
This volunteer had no link with that article, having never edited it and not even knowing of its existence before entering the DCRI offices. He was chosen and summoned because he was easily identifiable [...]
Can you imagine the pressure they put this volunteer through? Threatening him with five years of prison if he does not immediately comply and delete the article in the intelligence agency's offices? You think that doesn't matter?
Google has self-censored sites in the Washington, D.C., area and other areas of military and national security interest at the request of the USA government. It's blurred the regions or limited the resolution at which users can scan the areas, such as Fort Knox or the Naval Observatory a.k.a. the Vice-President's Residence. It's also done that for China and India, South Korea, Australia, and others (I think) at those government's requests also. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government the name of that link speaks for itself
How Google And Bing Maps Control What You Can See
http://gizmodo.com/5907421/the-dutch-have-the-weirdest-google-maps-censorship
and of course wikipedia's article on Map censorship by google and microsoft So if Google and MS and others already do all of this at the behest of the government, why are we surprised that the French government is trying to censor Wikipedia?
You are defending the LIFEWORK of a PORN dealer
get over your little righteous selves
Y'know, even if we accept the conclusion that dealing in porn is evil, would that more upstanding citizens had projects nearly as worth defending...
In Russia Wikipedia is giving up to the political pressure to remove or edit a page on Cannabis smoking (Russian version of the page).
I can't fully understand what exactly on that page provoked the government reaction, but apparently there are a number of pages that the Russian gov't is set against (suicide, methamphetamine, bong, amphetamine, The Complete Manual of Suicide - the page on a Japanese book).
In any case, the Russian government is engaged in censorship against Internet sites and other "extremist" materials, which include books, articles, music, images, etc.
Apparently too many people around the world just can't come to grips with the fact that trying to stop proliferation of information on the Net is a stupid idea, but hey, laws don't have to be intelligent. Intelligence is not a prerequisite for survival, apparently it's also not a prerequisite for governing.
You can't handle the truth.
You are defending the LIFEWORK of a PORN dealer
I. What the fuck are you talking about?
II. What's the problem with porn dealers or their lifework?
III. Presupposing your argument has any merit*:
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." — H. L. Mencken
* I don't believe your argument has merit, but I do believe that Mencken's quote is applicable to the general viewpoint you've expressed.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Yet, only a fraction of the actual rapes occuring are reported. Maybe having the highest incidence of reported rapes isn't such a bad thing.
I am still looking for the purpose of this facility: 46.716209,1.244688 near Rosnay, France
There is no "French Intelligence Agency" -- or CIA, or whatever -- there is a group of individual people who make individual decisions to promote or deny freedom, while saying they are part of something greater, so as to confuse people. It's just like all the people who support the drug war because of crap like "no man is an island" or "harming the community." Show me which individual person was harmed? We have been brainwashed by a thousand years of collectivist bullshit, going back to the Middle Ages and how the church said that if you were a peasant, it was your place in the world to serve everyone else and that was that. We just have the modern version of it -- suckering people into thinking they're supposed to be good "citizens" or "taxpayers" while basically serving someone who's smart enough to game the system and use it for their own ends.
1. He's talking about the fact that the seed money for Wikipedia came from Jimmy Wales' work at Bomis, a search engine mostly notable for an expansive adult content section. 2. Not addressed. 3. Not addressed.
Tell that to china, who has over a billion people behind a a literal and figurative wall. Thats a large chunk of the world population.
... is that we can no longer hire French citizens for telecommute work on sensitive jobs.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Not if it's a Fed.
Um, this isn't a Tea Party website you dickhead, go away.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." — H. L. Mencken
Mencken is not quoted enough these days. The man was a genius. Social and political commentary that is still relevant 50 or 100 years later... scares me.
If the rules stop you from improving Wikipedia, Ignore it.
Brohoof to Julian Assange.
Isn't the use of the words; French + intelligence, an oxymoron?
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!