Report Warns Against Well-Meaning Net Censorship

athloi writes "A report entitled 'Governing the Internet,' was issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The document, which highlights the increasing environment of internet 'policing' around the world, characterized the practice as 'a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes -- democracies and dictatorships alike -- seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear.' From the article: 'The OSCE report says Kazakhstan's efforts to rein in Internet journalism in the name of national security is reminiscent of Soviet-era "spy mania," and it says Georgian law contains numerous provisions curbing freedom of expression online. Web sites, blogs and personal pages all are subject to criminal as well as civil prosecution in Kazakhstan, and the country's information minister, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, has vowed to purge Kazakh sites of "dirt" and "lies."'"

Lots of this going around

Technorati simply banned my site. Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog, and when that wasn't enough, they simply had Blogger delete the blog.

No kiddie porn, no copyright violations, not even libel. Critical of America over the war on drugs and Israel over the war on terror though? You bet.

The posts that triggered this orgy of censorship saw me positing the likelihood that Israel had nuclear weapons forward-deployed in other nations. Shortly after the second post in the series, Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli who blew the whistle on their nuke program, got arrested again. It would seem as though there are some subjects Israel would rather we didn't discuss. I guess I can understand that, but since when does Israel get to control what I can or can't say?

They want to pretend censorship like this is only taking place in places like China. That's bullshit. It's happening here in America and with ever increasing frequency.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- Johnn F. Kennedy

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Censored [blogspot.com] by [blogspot.com] Technorati [blogspot.com] and now, Blogger too! [blogspot.com]

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The important difference here is that google and technorati aren't governments, nor were their actions mandated by the government. I mean, it sucks for you that google doesn't like you, but it isn't the government's fault.

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Excuse me, but how do you know their actions weren't mandated by the government?

We certainly know they censor content when China asks them to.

Why wouldn't they do the same when the U.S. Government asks the same?

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Censored [blogspot.com] by [blogspot.com] Technorati [blogspot.com] and now, Blogger too [blogspot.com]

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> Excuse me, but how do you know their actions weren't mandated by the government? Because I am the government...

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That's what I'd bet on. I'm filing this with all the "I got downmodded for being conservative" whining.

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Those damn potato eating... :-p
My money's on the secret Hawaiian Kingship and their plans to expand over the USA
-nB

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In the age where the constitution was drafted corporations were like little fluffy chivavas compared to the mountainlike power of the government. In today's age megacorporations bear a lot of power. Technically it is not a violation of the constitution* if

Oversight and Categorization

The difficulty is that different corporations wield a lot of power in different ways. No one is complaining that 3M is censoring people, but Google and other media and/or advertising companies are going to come up against that accusation a great deal. We n

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To extend parent's point:
Yell "Bomb" in an airport, "Shooter" at a presidential speech, or "Fire" in a theater and see how far the first amendment gets you.

you are entitled to your opinion, but there is a line, that once crossed puts you in dangerous water

Re:Lots of this going around

The thing about free speech, as protected by the US Constitution, is that it only protects you against the government (not private or public businesses) and it doesn't guarantee you a forum. If the US government chose to censor your blog, that's against the constitution. If Google decided that they don't want your blog on their Blogger service, that's completely within their rights to do and is not a violation of free speech. Without knowing why Google decided to remove your blog (did the Israeli government really pressure them?), there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

That said, you can still say what you want. You just need to find another forum. Find a web hoster that's sympathetic to your cause (meaning they won't drop you) and host your blog there.

Re:Lots of this going around

The thing about free speech, as protected by the US Constitution, is that it only protects you against the government

Actually, it only stops congress from passing laws against free speech. The constitution doesn't say anything about law enforcement officials enforcing laws not passed by congress - hello Gonzales loophole!

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Why not host your own blog on your own server? I mean sure, you're still subject to the possibility that your ISP may block your server if you get labeled as a "terrorist" or "dissident", but you'd likely have more control over your site (even in terms

Re:Lots of this going around

Why not host your own blog on your own server?

That reminds me of the infamous Bonsai Kitten Website fiasco where a university student did a farcical Website "selling" Bonsai Kitten paraphernalia. The site got banned from just about every hosting company that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) found out about, and the FBI even investigated the site and the people behind it. PETA actually wanted the people behind the site arrested.

It doesn't really matter what you publish; if it is popular enough and there is an Interest Group that doesn't like it then it will likely be censored. If a Website author is rich, then there will be more options, but most people would likely just give up. And if the site was political and controversial, then there may be government "hate crimes" to deal with, blocking from censorware, etc. There is no easy solution to dealing with censorship. If Google just decides it's easier for them to not list the site in their search engine then they will not list it, which makes the site unavailable to those who are not already aware of it.

One solution would be Freenet, but that too is only available to those who know about it and make the effort to install the software and find the proper "keys" to access the site. Freenet too can also be hampered by legislation in Western countries. The same with Tor and the Onion Network. Tor is rather easy to censor since the IP addresses of the proxies are easily available http://proxy.org/faq.shtml [proxy.org].

And there are always the un-brave who just give up trying to say anything in the first place. When one has to worry about SLAPP (unjustified lawsuits to silence people), Law Enforcement (the war on terror, drugs, think-of-the-children, think-of-the-pets), Special Interest Groups, the PC (Politically Correct) crowd, employers data-mining their employees (or potential employees), even DDoS and "hackers" / crackers; self-censorship is probably more prevalent than people realize. Words, ideas, pictures, humour, and just about every form of communication can be seen as dangerous. The Internet was once a relatively easy way to express oneself, but it is getting harder all the time. ISPs are even finding ways to censor P2P traffic that is designed to obfuscate itself.

The only real solution to censorship is to change the attitudes of the people who have the authority and control to influence the Tubes. Since these people are mainly politicians (like Ted Stevens) who are largely ignorant of the technology they legislate and who could care less about the social dynamics of freedom (beyond their own narrow paradigms), the future does not look bright for an unbridled flow of (uncensored) information.

References:
http://www.shorty.com/bonsaikitten/bkgallery.html [shorty.com] (Bonsai Kitten mirror)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai_Kitten [wikipedia.org]
http://freenetproject.org/ [freenetproject.org]
http://tor.eff.org/ [eff.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP [wikipedia.org]

Better act now

This would be a good "Ask Slashdot" question, maybe if somebody else asked it it might be posted.

No, go ahead and post it. Slashdot isn't part of the Zionist conspiracy.
...
Yet.

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Technorati simply banned my site. Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog, and when that wasn't enough, they simply had Blogger delete the blog.

Could you post the relevant content here, so we could look at it ourselves? Gi

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OK. The formatting is going to suck though...

M.A.D. R.I.P.

(If you haven't already done so, please read the Iranian nuke vs. Israeli nuke post [blogspot.com], you can consider this post to be a continuation and/or expansion of the points made ther

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Umm... please don't reproduce.

Signed: the world.

Please don't mod parent down

Please don't mod the parent post down -- I asked him to post his content here so we could take a look at it and better evaluate his claims. I actually disagree with his claims and his viewpoint, but he shouldn't be penalized for what I asked him to do.

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war on terror, well... the day might come where it's really going to

suck to be you.

Read the rest of this comment...

The REST? DAMN, DUDE - you weren't censored for political incorrectness, they removed you for filling up all the disks on their se

Re:Lots of this going around

It would probably help if you didn't say things like "The racist Jews at The New York Times simply desire to preserve what little credibility they have remaining..." (Ironically, your blog is still cached [72.14.253.104] by Google.)

You come very close to stepping over the line from "anti-Zionist" to fundamentalist racist in that sentence.

Re:Lots of this going around

Well in a society that respects free speech he has every right to post that trash. Racist speech is protected.

Re:Lots of this going around

Well in a society that respects free speech he has every right to post that trash. Racist speech is protected.

Maybe, but blogger has no obligation to host it free of charge.

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You come very close to stepping over the line from "anti-Zionist" to fundamentalist racist in that sentence.

I suppost a construct like fundamentalist racist could mean something, but the closest I've come up with is in the present context is that it refers

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As for the line, I don't know where yours is drawn, but mine is drawn at the intersection between words meaning something, and the use of slogans, catchprases, propaganda and cliches.

Attacking my ideas is one thing. Attacking my vocabulary is another.

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It would probably help if you didn't say things like "The racist Jews at The New York Times simply desire to preserve what little credibility they have remaining..."

It is not racist to claim that a group of people not primarily selected by their race, i

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> Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog

Could you elaborate on what you mean by Google "truncating links"?

Important difference in censorship

They want to pretend censorship like this is only taking place in places like China. That's bullshit. It's happening here in America and with ever increasing frequency.

I'm glad, your Israel-bashing was bashed back into whence it came from (more detailed

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It's possible that your blog was deleted because it was viewed by blogger as promoting "racial hatred". You many many references to the "racist Jews at The New York Times", and you claim that Technocrati blocked you because the founder and CEO is jewish,

"Well-Meaning" Net Censorship?

Oxymoronic much?

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Umm...? Actually that's not at all oxymoronic, even in spirit. I don't tihnk "oxymoronic" means what you think it means. One can certainly have good intentions and perform an ultimately "bad" act.

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I don't think censorship means what you think it means.

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Inconceivable!

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Censorship is not bad per se. There are already laws against child porn, bomb-making instructions and nuclear launch codes being shared with the world.

So censorship can indeed me good, as long as we save it for only the absolutely-worst things.

Too specific

If only there were a report that warned against "well-meaning" acts to force people to do (or not do) things against their will in general. That would be cool.

Forcing people to act against their own interests is bad in general. Especially when it's sold as "well-meaning". Censorship is no exception.

Kazakhstan censoring negative reports

from Uzbekistan, namely about how there Potassium is better.

there's a machiavellian answer

you can't entirely shield people from themselves (ie, the thoughts of their fellow citizens). the internet is just a powerful way to do what people do anyways whenever and whereever they congregate: gossip and pass rumors

therefore, it would be more cost ef

You think you get can-spam, net neturality...

...and all those other supposedly good things you want without getting the bad interference and ubiqitious filtering, you are fooling yourself.

The internet was much better when it was the wild west. If fact, it is over. We are getting the do-gooders and know-betters running the show, and it is game over, either with dems or reps in charge (excluding Ron Paul who won't win). Our internet will be turned into a PC, child-safe surburb unless we move on to some new dark network.

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No, HTTP is over. Maybe even SMTP and POP.

But I can guarantee that if I (or anyone else) popularizes MUPOTDP (My Ubiquitous Protocol Of The Day Protocol) and there's an Apache module and a client app ("browser") for it, the party is back on. And when the n

As proverb would have it...

"road to hell is paved with good intentions."

This got me thinking.

This kind of censorship is something that a real-life Church Lady [wikipedia.org] would do.

Keep in mind

The internet treats censorship as damage and reroutes around it.

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That's fine for everyone who isn't being censored. The censored will just become insular.

Western Europe

I think it is interesting how there is no mention of western european censorship: Hate speach (France etc...), Holocaust Denial (Germany etc...) We may not like what people say, and may even wish they couldn't say it, but censoring it is wrong. If this com

Increasingly common restrictions.

I work with an international governance watchdog, Global Integrity ( http://www.globalintegrity.org/ [globalintegrity.org] ), and anecdotally we're seeing a marked increase in online censorship being reported, under democracies and dictators both, even since we started looking at this in 2004. It's like the anti-democracy elements of the world just now figured out how to do this in earnest. We've just begun tracking the issue rigorously this year - we'll let Slashdot know when that report comes out.

Gimme a thug rather than well-meaning Big Brothers

A criminal bureaucracy will just harass you until they get what they want -- your money generally. Once they have your money and you're broke, they'll just make sure you toe the line, but otherwise they'll let you be because they recon they cannot get blood from a turnip. It's called a kleptocracy and it's very common now and in History. You are more than welcome to practice warfare against them because it's fair game to try to throw down a dictatorship of thugs.

But the absolute worst nightmare is a bureaucracy of well-meaning weenies, always concerned about your own well-being, sometimes genuinely. Those won't stop harassing you, ever. They know what's good for you. They know you're too dumb to survive without them. And they know that they need to constantly babysit you from cradle to grave. There is no way to get them to stop. You cannot throw money at them to have them leave you alone, because they want you to be happy. Of course, they'll make you miserable. They are the nannycrats.

We are clearly in that case here. And you know the cinch? When nannycrats get ousted, they are surprised, nay, shocked that people don't want their overbearing, crushing attention.

Beware of people who want to make you happy in spite of yourself. Gimme a thug anytime over a nannycrat.

Tyranny

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may

More worried...

..about the secret blocklists that are in use in at least Sweden and Finland. In Finland it is to be used against child porn and everyone swore that the lists would not be used for anything else .. until suddenly someone wanted to block out foreign poker s

I've been thinking...

And this may be obvious to others but it just occurred to me. Hasn't most trouble, pain, and suffering in the world been caused by movements which "have vowed to purge"?

I'm an athiest, and I used to think that it was religion that caused most of the trouble, pain, and suffering. But I have to admit that athiest regimes have just as much blood on their hands. Then I started chalking it up to human nature (which it may be) but that's not a very useful distinction, what with not being a distinction at all. Recently I've started thinking that it is the idea that we must "cleanse" or "fix" things that is the cause of most evil. The idea that if we could only rid the world of a certain type of person or activity then we'd be much better off. I think that is the flag that indicates trouble. And people of all beliefs and political positions can get into this mindset.

Of course, I have to watch myself as it becomes easy to want to rid the world of people who "vow to purge", which makes me another monster. Instead I try to remind myself I can stand up in opposition to such a thing without trying to purge it. I don't want to kill or dethrone the leader of Kazakhstan, I just don't want him to go after people or their expression in attempt to cleanse things. All things have muddy gray edges, and there are cases where I'm sure this yardstick won't work perfectly. But whenever I find myself saying "the world would be a better place if we could only rid the world of these people..." I stop and check myself.

Anyways, just thought I'd mention it. I think that the ideal world is achieved by not worrying so much about trying to make the ideal world, and just doing your best and enjoying life and letting others do the same.

Cheers.

ALL censorship is "well-meaning"

It is not like the the censors are sitting somewhere rubbing their hands thinking, Ok, who am I gonna stick it to today...

They all mean well...

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... NOT