Recently, a popular piracy site in the UK was blocked after the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) won a court case. Many people feel that this was unjust, that people should be allowed to read (and download) whatever material they want as a part of the "right to freedom of speech" principle. They felt that this right was violated when the government blocked the website. Do you think that governments should be able to restrict citizens from browsing certain sites? Why do you think this?
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I think that governments should not restrict the websites that their citizens visit. First of all, it does violate free speech. If a government shut down a bookstore for containing offensive books, the public outcry would be immense. That is basically the same thing as closing down a website for containing items which a particular group may find offensive. Also, if a website contains actual illegal content (e.g. child pornography or pirated material), the government should go after the actual people who are responsible, not after a domain name or an IP address. There is also another problem with "only" censoring illegal content: the slippery slope. Governments tend to never be satisfied with their original field of duty. What starts out as a reasonable blocking of illegal things may quickly develop into the censorship of any material the government finds unsuitable for the masses, as is the case with the Great Firewall of China.

The basic idea: I do not think a government-driven country-wide Internet censorship is ever just.

• As all the powers that belongs to the "visible hand", the fatal problem of government controlled Internet censorship is the lack of proper self-regulation and high probability of abuse. In rather authoritarian countries it's more clearly exhibited, such as DPRK (Huh, basically no Internet), Burma ('The internet is regulated by the Electronic Act which bans the importing and use of a modem without official permission, and the penalty for violating this is a 15 year prison sentence, as it is considered "damaging state security, national unity, culture, the national economy and law and order."'), South Korea (...'maintains a wide-ranging approach toward the regulation of specific online content and imposes a substantial level of censorship on elections-related discourse and on a large number of Web sites that the government deems subversive or socially harmful'...), China (hundred of thousands of sites blocked, including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, BBC, VOA, and some Google services, thousands of people monitored or arrested for saying "improper" words on the Internet), and Cuba, yet it also happens in democratic countries, like India and Russia.
  
• Even if the government itself does not abuse the censoring system, that the content to censor are decided democratically, there are still chances that the freedom of some individuals or groups of individuals been violated. There's a bad point in human nature, that we are inclined to attack or even eliminate anybody who holds an idea deviating from what we believe, or have different behaviors that we consider abnormal, even though they don't affect our live at all. Surely with ever-heightening level of education, the masses have become much wiser, and the machine of democracy is more effective then ever, yet it is not perfect yet, and it's well possible that the pursue to what people consider "justice" would step personal freedom under his feet. Socrates was trailed and executed in the democratic Athens, for "corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens", and another more recent exhibition of the tendency was the raise of McCarthyism after World War II. (Hmm, sorry, I know quite little about the western history, so I cannot offer more examples.) Today we still have discriminations, towards different groups of the people, the black, the homosexuals, the Jews, or towards some special behaviors that are not particularly unreasonable, but "we just hate it". (In the more religious countries, especially the Islamic ones, the problem is horribly severe.) When these discriminations get reflected on the policy of censoring contents of the Internet... Well, you know what will happen.
  
• Censorship is in no sense a cure of piracy. Whatever is needed by the masses, there will be somebody supplying it. When PirateBay is banned, people will create PirateGulf; when PirateGulf is banned, people will create PirateStrait, then someday PirateOcean. And what makes it even worse is, Internet is a space where all kinds of information can be easily copied and losslessly & anonymously distributed -- a bless for most of us, and a curse for software/game/movie/music producers. Miserable software/game/movie/music producers develop thousands of DRM techniques, and people ultimately find a way to deal with most of them. The final result is governments and the corporations throws billions of dollars into it, but get trapped in an infinite race game, and they never actually win. (Actually, there is indeed one way to stop piracy: Dramatically increase the cost of piracy, and hang every person using pirated software, but hmm, will anybody ever agree on that? I think the the solution of pirate is to make most content freely available, and create profits with special support services and related physical products instead. )
  
• A quite minor issue is, all sorts of censorships affect speed in a certain degree, and they cost money from taxpayers. Seems the Internet censorship here (in China) add 100-200 ms ping latency. Disaster if you like to play online games.
  

Censorship specifically targeted at a group of people who lacks the necessary ability of judgments (e.g. children) or in particular public places (Well, it does not sound like the greatest idea in the world to allow teachers to view gay porn in the school...), though, might be appropriate. It also makes sense to prevent extremist/terrorism content from appearing publicly on the Internet, such as, an extension tutorial for making bombs and fire it in front of a school building, since it's way beyond the extent of freedom and tolerance one deserves.

Oh my god, this reply took me almost two hours...

(08-01-2011, 12:58 PM)RichardGv Wrote: It also makes sense to prevent extremist/terrorism content from appearing publicly on the Internet, such as, an extension tutorial for making bombs and fire it in front of a school building, since it's way beyond the extent of freedom and tolerance one deserves.

I disagree, I think it's quite interesting to learn how to make it, but that doesn't mean I will actually use it. It's upto people how they handle information.
Offcourse, if the information in question is deemed illegal, that's a different story.

(08-01-2011, 08:10 PM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: I disagree, I think it's quite interesting to learn how to make it, but that doesn't mean I will actually use it. It's upto people how they handle information.
Offcourse, if the information in question is deemed illegal, that's a different story.

It's indeed up to reader to decide how to use the information about how to make a bomb and fire it in front of a school building, HK, yet allowing such directly implementable plan to appear publicly on the Internet would significantly increase the possibility of a real implementation of the plan. Your sister might be learning right in the school, or my sister, and you dad, or mine, could be teaching there. We cannot put the lives of thousands of people, including children, in risks, just in exchange of a little part of freedom of speech that seems quite unnecessary. We cannot afford that.

And this is not related to the law. It's just a moral judgment. We are humans, not gods. We deserves freedom, but we never deserved unlimited/uncontrolled freedom.

(08-01-2011, 10:51 PM)RichardGv Wrote:

(08-01-2011, 08:10 PM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: I disagree, I think it's quite interesting to learn how to make it, but that doesn't mean I will actually use it. It's upto people how they handle information.
Offcourse, if the information in question is deemed illegal, that's a different story.

It's indeed up to reader to decide how to use the information about how to make a bomb and fire it in front of a school building, HK, yet allowing such directly implementable plan to appear publicly on the Internet would significantly increase the possibility of a real implementation of the plan. Your sister might be learning right in the school, or my sister, and you dad, or mine, could be teaching there. We cannot put the lives of thousands of people, including children, in risks, just in exchange of a little part of freedom of speech that seems quite unnecessary. We cannot afford that.

And this is not related to the law. It's just a moral judgment. We are humans, not gods. We deserves freedom, but we never deserved unlimited/uncontrolled freedom.

True, but if it doesn't explicitly say how to fire it in the school (or even mention the possibility) I think it should be allowed.

I don't think they should be allowed to block anything. That seem to me as if it is an infringement on our rights to free speech. It doesn't matter what the website says, people have the right to say what they want, no matter who doesn't agree with it. Thats my personal opinion, though; call me extreme if you want.

I don't think that's extreme at all, in fact, I feel the same way.

(08-01-2011, 12:58 PM)RichardGv Wrote: It also makes sense to prevent extremist/terrorism content from appearing publicly on the Internet, such as, an extension tutorial for making bombs and fire it in front of a school building, since it's way beyond the extent of freedom and tolerance one deserves.

That's what I would call a grey area. It would be horrible for a website to instruct people to blow up schools, however, I think that if a person wished to blow up innocent children they would have done it already. Crazy people will do crazy things if they want to do crazy things, that's the way of the world...

(08-02-2011, 06:59 AM)ErrorCode Wrote: I don't think they should be allowed to block anything. That seem to me as if it is an infringement on our rights to free speech. It doesn't matter what the website says, people have the right to say what they want, no matter who doesn't agree with it. Thats my personal opinion, though; call me extreme if you want.

Well, I have a extreme (and nasty) question: Do you think people be allowed to talk about how to murder you or your family members publicly on the Internet? :D

(Nah, I'm kinda kidding.)

(08-02-2011, 05:54 AM)HiddenKnowledge Wrote: True, but if it doesn't explicitly say how to fire it in the school (or even mention the possibility) I think it should be allowed.

There's barely any beneficial reasons for a normal person to create/use a bomb, unlike the case of handguns (which can used to... Shoot rabbits? Oh well, it doesn't sound like a particularly useful thing, not for me. :) ). Bombs are more inclined to be used for destructive purposes. (Do you still remember how the King of Brobdingnag stated about cannons in Gulliver's Travels?) Even if an average person, with insufficient knowledge, builds a bomb or plans to use a bomb for some honorable purposes (I cannot think of any), he is very likely unable to store it or use it safely, thus possibly leading to catastrophic results, for him, his family members, and his neighbors. Not to mention people with malicious purposes, people with psychological disorders but not staying in a hospital, or children with the dangerous combination of curiosity and irrationality. For the safety of the billions of humans living on the planet, I do not think making any instructions about building or using weapons of mass destruction public can be tolerated. Not in a normal democratic society, at least. (Surely, it might make sense to reveal such information to Libyans.)

(08-02-2011, 07:02 AM)Zack Wrote: I don't think that's extreme at all, in fact, I feel the same way.

(08-01-2011, 12:58 PM)RichardGv Wrote: It also makes sense to prevent extremist/terrorism content from appearing publicly on the Internet, such as, an extension tutorial for making bombs and fire it in front of a school building, since it's way beyond the extent of freedom and tolerance one deserves.

That's what I would call a grey area. It would be horrible for a website to instruct people to blow up schools, however, I think that if a person wished to blow up innocent children they would have done it already. Crazy people will do crazy things if they want to do crazy things, that's the way of the world...

The information about building destructive weapons and explosive materials is usually out of the scope of the knowledge of an average person. For a highly intelligent and aggressive anti-socialist, he would be able to find out a way to produce the explosive materials and blow the school up even if the information is not available publicly. But for the less aggressive anti-socialist, or the people who get piqued suddenly due to some events, a guide about making explosive materials or how/where to place the bomb most effectively could act as a direct encouragement. Also, if one already plans to carry out some terrorism acts, the information could lead him to choose more destructive forms. For example, after viewing how to produce a bomb, a person originally intended to shoot children in a school with a handgun could decide to blow the school building up directly instead.

So overall, the effect of such information is possibly turning an irritated person to a crazy one, and making crazy person do even more crazy things than what they originally intend.

(Actually, most "crazy" person are not dramatically different from the "normal" ones. Most of them are not born crazy, but may just have meet miserable events in their lives, or have some fatal characteristics that get stimulated all a sudden. Miserable people are always have a hateful part, and hateful people always have a miserable part.)

You know what? You do have a point there, Richard. However, how could a censor differentiate between a person reading instructions for bombs so they can make makeshift fireworks and a person reading bomb instructions so they can kill innocents? There is really no way to do that, so the information would have to be blocked from everybody, whether they intended to use it for good or bad. And that is what you agreed should be avoided: the total blocking of material.

(08-02-2011, 11:32 AM)Zack Wrote: You know what? You do have a point there, Richard. However, how could a censor differentiate between a person reading instructions for bombs so they can make makeshift fireworks and a person reading bomb instructions so they can kill innocents? There is really no way to do that, so the information would have to be blocked from everybody, whether they intended to use it for good or bad. And that is what you agreed should be avoided: the total blocking of material.

I'm afraid you misunderstood my idea, Zack.

• I did not agree on the total blocking of some particularly dangerous kind of materials should be avoided. I just mean for most kinds of materials.
  
• The problem with explosive materials is they are not really need for most people, unlike handguns, knives, or hammers, which are dangerous, too, yet useful for everybody. Do you make fireworks everyday? Or are you trying to dig a coal mine in your garden? Or you plan to build a 10-meter high tunnel under your house? Explosive materials are mostly used for destructive purposes, as what I have indicated in the previous reply, yet for normal people it serves no use.
  Moreover, most people lack the knowledge to use explosive materials safely, even when they plan to use it for something good.
  
• Let's analyze the pros and cons of blocking contents about producing explosive materials.
  Pros:
  • Save lives of innocents from some terrorism attacks. I presume some 20-50 people per year. At least we could have probably save some people died in the explosion in Oslo.
    
  • Since most people lack the knowledge about how to produce explosive materials, the chances of explosions caused by in storing/utilizing improperly explosive materials are reduced. This saves... Perhaps two or three lives per year. There are always some silly guys on this planet.
    
  Cons:
  • People can produce fireworks themselves. Well, have you done this kind of dangerous thing once in your life?
    
  • Some people will feel they have more freedom of speech.
    
  • Governments may abuse the right. Well, whether a piece of information belongs to terrorism or not could usually be easily defined, so as far as the government is under control of its people, it's not really a big issue. (If the government is authoritarian, we cannot stop it from censoring contents, anyway.)
    
  So, you exchange 22-53 lives (per year) with some feelings of freedom, basically. Which one do you think is heavier?
  
• If every country forbids posting such content on the servers within the country (this basically is the case) there's no need to set up special censoring national gateway, therefore no penalty in speed of Internet connections.