Should governments be able to block websites?

[RichardGv]

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.