Collateral Damage as UK Censors Internet Archive 272
An anonymous reader noted the latest developments in the controversial censoring of the internet by UK ISPs. Apparently since some content of the Wayback Machine is bad, the whole thing needs to be blacklisted.
That is as expected. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.
Re:That is as expected. (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything that can be censored is ALREADY information. Censorship is just splitting information into that which is deemed acceptable for grown civilised adults to view/read without losing their minds, vs. that which only the extra-grown, extra-civilised censors can view/read without losing their minds.
Re:That is as expected. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a charitable assumption. This censorship could also be political, malicious, or for that matter completely random. Note that the IWF refuse to discuss details of what specifically led them to blacklist Wayback, other than the usual non-answer of "think of the children".
If (correction, when) the nuLabour regime feel like making any particular group unPersons, they could pick up the phone to the IWF, remind them that regulation is better than legislation, and have anything they like censored, opaquely and without oversight or appeal. Anyone who questions the IWF axiomatically likes kiddie porn, remember.
Re:That is as expected. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where have I seen this before? Oh yea can we tag this VForVendetta?
If the governments want to do anything, they should make the parents responsible for their kids and them selves. Parents should be teaching their kids right from wrong, what those parents want their kids to know. It looks like parents want their kids to be raised at school. Which is wrong. Children learn writing, reading, math... Children are raised at home by the parents. Your job as a parent is not done after the DNA combination and birth of said child.
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That's all nice in the western world, but the whole "blame the parents" system fails miserably in less-fortunate (read: terminally fucked) regions of the world where the parents come from a long line of ethically bankrupt generations, largely the product of their dysfunctional war-mongering governments. How can you teach a child the "right way", when you've never known it yourself ?
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Re:That is as expected. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a rather absolute statement. Kids are raised by everyone who influences them, including parents, teachers, after school care providers, and others they interact with. Your statement is only completely accurate for sheltered, shut-in, home-schooled kids who grow up completely clueless about the world.
I try to shape the influence other people have over my son by giving him the mental tools to evaluate what they tell him, but I can't lock him away from outside influences. Nor do I want to. Listening to and evaluating different opinions is the only way you develop interpersonal critical thinking skills.
Tell that to my ex...
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Re:That is as expected. (Score:4, Insightful)
Would ya'll please stop misusing this? Semantics are about content, syntax about presentation. Semantic differences are important (though the degree is variable,) syntactic ones are essentially not.
Re:That is as expected. (Score:5, Funny)
I thought semantics were about pretending to protect you from viruses...
Oh wait, that's Symantec.
No. Kids are raised by... (Score:2, Insightful)
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You or whoever "we" is and I'll assume you're not using the royal "we" have nothing to do with my kids. Your input is (to be honest) intrusive, unwanted and more than a little presumptuous and if all you see around you are terrible parents that says more about your social circle than anything else.
My point is you parent your kids however the hell you want. As long as it isn't abusive or intrusive on my (or anyone else's) rights, I don't care what you do. Nor should you care what anyone else does.
If you th
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Anyone who questions the IWF axiomatically likes kiddie porn, remember.
"Do you like kiddie porn?"
"Axiomatically? Yes"
hmm.
I'll keep with my usual response of "Why? Are you a terrorist?"
Re:That is as expected. (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree that the picture you paint is truly terrifying I think it is important that one point is reiterated: the fact that the government now routinely threaten groups of people with legislation. The problem with this, as far as I can see it, is that we now have a whole raft of pseudo laws (nuLaws maybe) which we have no redress against. Worse still, very few (if any) of these nuLaws are debated in anyway that could be considered open and there is no standardized way to have them reviewed once they are in place. If the government ever want to increase the scope of these nuLaws they just have to put pressure on the nuLaw enforcers who have a vested interest in doing exactly what the government tell them as their existence depends on it. If the people cry foul the government can simply point the finger and say it wasn't us.
If all of that wasn't bad enough I believe the sort of people that gravitate to this type of organization tend to be conservative and more pro-censorship. It's like the age old joke that you don't want anyone serving as a police officer that wants to be a police officer.
I want off this rock!
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It is probably an intersection between the album cover incident and the general reason why blacklists are rarely made public.
If we knew why it was blacklisted, we could(and probably would) find fault with it and then publicly ridicule the blacklist, holding this to be yet another reason why blacklists are made of failure.
So instead of giving us more ammo, they just nuke the whole thing. Nothing to object to, so we can only shout "there is nothing wrong with this site!" and them to reply "except for the kid
It's authorized by the Govt and pafunded by the EU (Score:2)
The parent's claim that the IWF is not affiliated with the UK Government
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Anything that can be censored is ALREADY information.
Pictures deemed inappropriate don't contain information and weren't blocked for the information they are carrying. (e.g. Virgin killer [slashdot.org])
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That's a horribly stupid thing to say. You might want to read about information sometime. Maybe start with wikipedia's entry. I hope to God you're not in the IT field. It does stand for Information Technology, after all.
Re:That is as expected. (Score:5, Funny)
Once you --- ------- internet ------ it tends to -------- until it gets -- --- way --- ---- -------information.
What?
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Good evening. This is an extraordinary period for America's *****. Over the past few weeks, many Americans have felt anxiety about their ***** and their fu***. I understand their worry and their f******. We've seen triple-digit swings in the s***. Major f**** have teetered on the edge of ****, and some have f*****. As uncertainty has grown, many ba*****s have restricted ****. C*** markets have f*****. And families and businesses have found it harder to ******.
We're in the midst of a serious f******
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"2 hidden comments"
Slashdot is censoring my internets!
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Once you start censoring internet things it tends to snowball until it gets in the way of agtually getting information.
Actually, it seems once you start censoring the Internet, it starts getting harder to censor the Internet.
For instance, my ISP, which did get involved in the wikpedia censorship fiasco, seems to have stayed clear of this one.
Re:That is as expected. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't the government. The IWF is a private organisation that ISPs voluntarily sign up to.
In my opinion, this is even worse, as there is NO review process, and noone ot be held accountable for mistakes.
WOW (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like the UK is purposely going out of it's way to prove internet censorship doesn't work.
I hope that's the goal, because otherwise they are just working to make their people dumber.
I somehow doubt the really objectionable stuff is on web pages that are open to the public.
Re:WOW (Score:4, Interesting)
Being in the USA myself, and hearing how bad the USA has become, I wonder how people justify such remarks in contrast to Australia and the UK?
Perhaps some folk would care to compare what is available in the UK and Australia and what is not, list those links on a website to show the world exactly how much is being censored. When the world can see how much is being withheld from the citizenry, it's probable that the UN and other countries will disagree with such censorship. I'm reasonably certain that you'll find instances of political censorship, and that would not look good.
Even wiki entry editing is a form of censorship and we've seen how that is not viewed as a good thing.
I wonder if anyone has any idea how much Australia and the UK are spending to censor the Internet.
I wonder how much (kiddy)porn is actually being censored. Is Al Jezzera on the black list? How about bloggers from Isreal?
Since there is probably already a way around the censoring mechanisms, does anyone know what it/they is/are?
The whole 'Virgin Killer' thing is stupendously idiotic. A picture which has been in the public view for decades gets banned? WTF? If Brits are getting any American television at all, there are far worse things to be seen there, every day. period. Not sure if anyone has seen Little Britain, but what I've seen of it outpaces the Virgin Killer album by miles. I fail to see how they justify that censorship, or any for that matter. Thought police!
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The previous Howard government (conservative) spent A$100 Million on providing a free client side filter to citizens that was broken within 30 minutes. The current Rudd government (less conservative) has spent nothing as it hasn't passed its idea through parliament yet. It's not likely to pass as it relies on the support of the greens who have openly opposed it and co-operation of the ISP's who have openly opposed
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Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Big deal. Not all ISPs use the IWF list and it's a free market.
Also, even before RTFA I just knew Virgin Media (The new AOL) would be on there. Got all my less computer literate relatives to stop using them months ago.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that free.
The IWF was created to appease the police who were otherwise going to prosecute ISPs and the ISPs were also due to face government legislation back in the 90s otherwise.
Accept the watch list, or face criminal action and legislation. That doesn't particularly sound like free choice to implement it or not to me. I'm not even sure what ISPs don't implement it, I doubt the list is particularly very big. Certainly the list of ISPs that do implement it on the IWF website is pretty comprehensive. Besides even if the free market did come in to play and the ISPs that didn't implement it started growing in size how much choice do you think they'd have to continue not to implement it?
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
This leads to the amusing situation where schools (who are clearly in a position to most 'benefit' from the IWF list) who use JANET or a JANET subsidiary for their Internet feed are not subject to the IWFs will.
Bureaucracy gone mad.
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I'm on Virgin Media. I can't see anything not working in archive.org so either they aren't blacklisting it or their blacklisting isn't working.
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Overreaction (Score:2)
Nothing new there. We've all had bosses or clients that do the same thing. No surprise. Just more heads shaking in disappointment.
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No it's simpler than that ... the IWF simply scans the internet for things they consider that their members *might* get prosecuted for allow people to see, and one click later the site is blacklisted
Every so often someone at the IWF clicks on the "No" button for a well known site and the site gets blacklisted, this is what happens when a self regulated independent body get censoring rights ...
Censorship (Score:5, Funny)
If you're reading this from the UK, this pos
Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is you cannot have freedom of speech and censorship at the same time. The freedom of speech is one of the most precious freedoms that we have, the freedom to express ideas and opinions. I may not agree with what a lot of people say but they have the right to say it. The power ultimately is in the hands of the people, there may come a time when the military has to choose to either side with the elected official or to side with the people, but that day will not come while the people sit idly still getting trampled upon.
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The thing is you cannot have freedom of speech and censorship at the same time
It seems that many European countries have decided that this [nytimes.com] isn't [bbc.co.uk] the case.
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You can "decide" that up is down and cold is hot or any of an unlimited number of illogical things, but it still doesn't make them true.
My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem. (Score:3, Insightful)
Germany and Austria take anything related to the Holocaust very seriously. Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited. It is also considered "taboo" to say anything along the lines of: "Well, Hitler wasn't all bad, y'know..."
Personally, I think this is a good thing, because it helps people realise the seriousness of the
Re:My take on the UK/US privacy/censorship problem (Score:2)
Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited
To each their own I suppose but I would never want to see a similar situation arise in my country. I don't see how banning speech of any kind is compatible with freedom of speech.
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Then you should stay in your own country!!!
Just kidding. But your views are a product of your environment.
I presume that you also would never want to see a similar situation arise in your country where you are ruled by a megalomaniac for 10 years, at the end of which your country is blown to smithereens then divided in two (one half to suffer the predations of another bunch of megalomaniacs for 40 more years) and to have to assume along with all your fellow citizens and your progeny collective responsibili
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Wait, isn't Germany the country where videogames can't have red blood? And aren't they the ones the ruined the Fallout tradition of being able to shoot kids (in game, obviously).
Smells like censorship. Smells like censorship that has nothing to do with the Holocaust.
Also, censoring a book, or a thought ("the holocaust never happened") is still censorship, no matter how much you agree with it being banned. Mein Kampf has some historical importance, so reading it does not denote that the reader is an aspir
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You can have a balance between freedom of speech and censorship. The common example of yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind.
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You can have a balance between freedom of speech and censorship. The common example of yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind.
People have a right to yell fire in a crowded theater. They can also be held responsible for their actions.
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There is no right to harm others purposefully.
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That's sorta like saying that people have a right to produce child pornography, and they can also be held responsible for their actions.
In other words, no, you DO NOT have a right to yell fire in a crowded theatre (that isn't really on fire). A right is something that is unimpeded and unencumbered by threats of legal action against you.
The right to free speech in the US was originally framed around political speech ONLY. That is, the government could not act against someone who said the current president
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Out of interest, what law would you specifically be breaking if you yell fire in a crowded theatre when it isn't actually on fire? Public endangerment or something along those lines?
Hang on a second (Score:2)
This "censorship" is occurring as a consequence of the UK's application of its child protection laws.
Now, we can have a discussion about how they have made a complete balls of implementing it, in which case I cannot disagree - but if you are saying that freedom of speech should protect child pornography then I'm sorry but your "freedom of speech" is seriously flawed.
On top of which, the United States, from whence I assume you speak, also does not recognise child pornography as protected.
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Actually it's even worse. Many people are aware of the phrase (at least here in the UK), it is spoken with reasonable regularity, and the people use it in a context in which they are agreeing with the sentiment. But it seems most people pay lip service to this, and don't actually mean it when push comes to shove. We just don't have the same reverence for free speech that Americans do, something I find unfortunate.
Simply appalling (Score:5, Insightful)
This is outrageous. No government has ANY right to censor the internet or anything else or determine what people look at. It is none of their business. I am simply disgusted, people did not fight and die for freedoms, like basic freedom of speech so that we could give it up and turn ourselves into a totalitarian dictatorship. The UK is NOT a free society, it has become a totalitarain dictatorship and its government has no right or validity to do this. Censorship is one of the most significant hallmarks of a totalitarian prison state. No free society can allow for censorship. Stand up for your rights people! Don't let them get away with enslaving you! This is what we call the totalitarian creep, just take away little peices of freedom at a time, and people dont notice what happens. People say "oh, its just a little freedom, not much", but those little peices start to add up. And in the UK they have been chipping away at the expectations of freedom and privacy for a while and getting people used to living with greater intrusions upon their freedoms and privacy all the time. Years ago, if we would have suggested that one day the government would demand to block access to content and just blatantly censor anything it pleases and monitor all of your communications, you would have been called a nutty conspiracy theorist. But it is happening right now!!! The conspiracy theorists were right and it is becoming increasingly obvious by the day that there are those in power who want to implement a total survellience and censorship society prison state, which would weaken dramatically the framework of a free soceity, leading to greater atrocities and establishment of stasi like agencies and secret police is next. Censorship of any kind is simply an atrocity and a violation of basic human rights and so is mass censorship and the presence of this are a sure sign you are not living in a free society.
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No government has ANY right to censor the internet ...
The UK government isn't censoring the internet. Some ISP's are. ISP's are free to choose whether they want to use a blacklist. You are free to choose an ISP that doesn't use the blacklist. Hence, I think a totalitarian dictatorship might be a bit of an overstatement.
Re:Simply appalling (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll throw in a (semi) related quote by George Carlin, "Rights aren't rights if someone can take them away, they're privileges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news, even badly, you'd know that every year the list gets shorter, and shorter and shorter."
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I bet lots of people would actually PAY for an ISP filtering Spam, Phishing, Not-Kid-Safe-Sites of whatever kind, Viruses etc.
Heck they would find people who would pay for a "terrorist-free-internet" if simply aljazeera was blocked!
Re:Simply appalling (Score:4, Insightful)
The UK government isn't censoring the internet. Some ISP's are. ISP's are free to choose whether they want to use a blacklist. You are free to choose an ISP that doesn't use the blacklist. Hence, I think a totalitarian dictatorship might be a bit of an overstatement.
I agree that avoiding hyperbole is a good idea. But only because such a tactic tends to gloss over the details. And that's where the devil can be found in this case.
On the surface it appears that this is simply a private organization providing a service to private companies. As you stated, ISPs choose to follow the recommendations of the IWF (the exact method of doing this remains a rather large question and is one of the base issue in this particular case). There is no direct government mandate to adhere to the IWF's list.
However, this glosses over the fact that the IWF was formed with assistance of the UK Government and continues to operate with, among other sources, EU funding. That the IWF works so closely with the UK Government lends an additional air of authority. Despite the lack of official authority or Governmental office, the IWF acts very much like they have both.
This really does give the appearance of the UK Government imposing bans without the hassle of them getting their hands dirty to do it. But anyone who wishes to make this claim had better understand the how and why of it. Otherwise the public will look at the claims, look at the situation at face value, and dismiss it outright without a full understanding of the players and their actions.
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The government gives a wink and a nod, they allow it to happen. Note that when i refer to government i also refer to large corporations because the two are increasingly equivalent. More on that in a moment. The thing with choose a different ISP is that there is such a monopoly of ISPs or difficulty in finding an ISP that does not censor that this does not gaurantee that you can avoid censorship. Unfortunately most of the population is apathetic, so you cant count on there to be any sort of backlash against
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You see that key just to the right of the little finger on your right hand?
The one that says "Enter" on it?
You might want to hit that one time for every three periods you use. I can't guarantee that it will be correct usage, but it will certainly make your thoughts easier to read. As it is, you could have had the answer to all the world's problems there and most of us wouldn't be able to read it thanks to that impenetrable wall of text you threw up.
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Stand up for your rights people! Don't let them get away with enslaving you!
I agree, what is happening to the UK government is very scary, as I've heard many people say, but I've never heard anyone suggest how to stand up for our rights/privacy!
Voteing doesn't work - they're all as corrupt as each other.
People are dreaming if they think the no.10 patition website does anything.
Most of the population doesn't even realise that this is happening, or don't believe it anyway.
I honestly belive that politicians don't have a bloody clue, don't act in anyone's interest except their ow
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Coup d'etat!
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When your enemies are successful, look at how your enemies work.
They use fear, artificially boosted stupidity, and disinformation. You can call it evil, but it works. It works very well.
So the only difference between you and them is how far you would go, compared to them.
That's why crooks like that win. They just go further that you think they possibly could, leaving you stunned.
So what you have to do, is decide, if you want to stay on your level of morale, hoping and wishing that something stops them... or
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I've never heard anyone suggest how to stand up for our rights/privacy!
Oppose Lords reform. [bbc.co.uk]
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This is a question I often ponder myself. There are channels to actgion, Including writing letters to the editor, letters to politicians, and supporting parties that vow to protect these free speech rights and vow to implement a bill of rights in the UK which gaurantees free speech with no exceptions, and to pass laws banning ISPs and other common carriers from engaging in censorship. Collectively large numbers of people can be a significant force. An independant democratic media that does not recieve fundi
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[emphasis mine] What about the fact that UK voters keep approving of this nonsense? Goofy shit is happening in UK with civil liberties, but it's been happening long enough, and under the command of democratically elected leaders, that I have to assume the people not only consent, but enthusiastically approve.
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The current government wasn't elected, and the one it replaced was a long way short of a majority.
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The authors of the US constitution and some of its amendments did not trust entirely trust the majority, thats why they put the bill of rights into the constitution. Under US constitution there are certain things that even the majority cannot do and that is infringe on the basic human rights of the individual, especially that of free speech and freedom of religion. The US constitutions authors intended to protect everyone's basic rights, not to have a dictatorship of the majority as in the UK, and that ther
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While it's a current issue in the UK this has sod all to do with the topic so will a mod please mark this as offtopic
You must be new here ;-).
UK-bashing is on topic, so long as the article is about the UK and the person posting is British.
(US-bashing is on topic regardless of the nationality of the poster.)
I was out looking for Great Tits, but cannot (Score:5, Funny)
I'm an ornithologist and yes, there is a bird called the "great tit" in Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_tits [wikipedia.org]
Quite often, I'm finding sites which refer to tits to be censored.
(there are also "boobies" which are seabirds as well)
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For some reason, this sparked the memory of an Animaniacs song:
What an advert! (Score:5, Funny)
"Wanted: Two birds for breeding. Preference given for Great Tits, but will settle for a Common Shag."
Bet that's going to cause confusion, Ma'am!"
Can you already see the next step? (Score:4, Insightful)
Databases for people trying to access blocked pages? Oh, wait, that already exists in the UK.
Now let's connect the dots. This is a page that was blocked because it contained child porn. You tried to access it. That makes you... well...?
Re:Can you already see the next step? (Score:4, Insightful)
Misdirected, possibly. Or improperly linked. Possibly a pedophile. I don't want the government to determine I'm a pedo if someone thinks it would be great fun to misdirect a link that I would visit to a pedo site.
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'Slippery Slope' arguments are always flawed and are usually an admission of not having a proper arguement.
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It's not slippery slope, it's time and again proven. People have been accused and even convicted because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's easier to be in the wrong place when the internet is involved. Not only would you be "in the wrong place at the wrong time" if you just happened to take your evening drink in the kingpin's bar during the sting, no matter when you were there, if only because you got the wrong directions from your friend you'd be on the list of suspects.
Now, wi
Google? (Score:3, Funny)
I'm waiting for this UK headline... (Score:2)
I'm waiting for this news from the UK. The British decide to censor their entire internet due to one objectionable site found in another country.
Upon closer reading, it'll be Chinese and Russian citizens are now after decades of governmental progress far more free than their UK and US counter parts. Neither the US or UK would like that news so we'd filter it because obviously it's mental porn that isn't good for our citizens to have. As it's mental porn, all those anti-porn laws can be used to filter the in
pfffft (Score:2, Interesting)
So Much for "Supply and Demand" (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that the IWF are blocking access to indecent images in the Internet Archive proves that they are a moralistic organisation rather than one which wishes to protect children. The dubious claim made by organisations such as the IWF is that simply viewing indecent images "creates a demand". While this claim is already flawed due to the fact that most producers take illegal images for profit/trade, the claim is undoubtedly wrong in the case of images on an archive which is almost certainly not operated by people who create indecent images. Just how would a producer be aware of the "increased demand" when he doesn't even know that the images are being viewed?
Tell them (Score:4, Insightful)
It Depends on the Content (Score:5, Informative)
"Wouldn't it be better to tell the Internet Archive about the offending images? If it really is child porn then I'm sure they'll be only too happy to remove it."
The UK criminalises "indecent" images of children; defined as images which "offend against the recognised standards of propriety". The US criminalises "pornographic" images of children; defined as images which involve lewd or lascivious exhibition of the genital area.
An image can be "indecent" (illegal in the UK) without being "pornographic" (illegal in the US). The IWF may therefore be blocking access to the Internet Archive due to images which are not considered "child porn" in the US.
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"It is almost if the IWF has a different view of child abuse than British law."
No, they have a very similar view. Parliament and Judges assume that non-sexual nude photographs of children are "abusive" and they have decided that simply accessing ("making") such images is abusive and should be illegal. Or maybe they simply can't cope with the idea of people being sexually aroused by pictures of children and so decided to go on a moral crusade, where "abusive" means "offending our morals". Either way, the IWF
The trouble with blacklists (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with blacklists is that the criteria are almost always emotional and subjective and rarely rational or objective. Since human emotional responses are never going to be precisely the same across the board, their resulting contents are a recipe for annoyance and worse. Why are they even still considered effective by anyone?
Finnish police vs. UK ISPs (Score:2)
The competition is heating up, and it seems that Finnish Police might be lagging a bit here! They haven't censored anything "high level" sites since w3c.org.
I wonder what will they have to do next not to lose this game entirely... Perhaps slashdot.org for reporting censorship going on or then they just copycat UK ISPs with Internet Archives.
As a side note, I remember seeing some headline on the latest issue of one of Finnish computer magazines on how to get around the local (dns-based) blacklists.
creeping fascism (Score:2)
The IWF makes me sick - using "think of the children" and child porn scares to chill political speech and information is reprehensible.
The only reason to censor the internet archive and the wayback machine is to control your populace and prevent them from learning and referencing things you'd rather they not know.
The wayback machine also makes it impossible for government or organizations to hide changes that they have made to websites - they can sweep things under the run and there is no going back to an e
About that IWF list of sites... (Score:2)
Has it leaked, yet?
Would make for some interesting reading, ya know.
If anybody knows where to find it, feel free to reply with pertinent details.
What really happened... (Score:3, Informative)
Is linked to half-way down the comments page on the El Reg article.
http://groups.google.com/group/demon.service/msg/6d14597274f42ecd [google.com]
Assuming that's a correct description (and it seems to fit the facts) it looks like there's been a (apparently now fixed) faux-pas on behalf of archive.org here to be caching the name of Demon's proxy in their cached static pages.
That doesn't mean that Demon's approach of "one page is on the blacklist; let's shove all accesses to the site through a proxy" is the right one either - that worked so well with Wikipedia, after all.
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Neither. Presumably the IWF have a stated goal of getting the Brits out of Ireland and establishing a 32-county Republic by messing with people's internet connections.
Re:Well you can always rise against oppression ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because those handguns you're allowed to buy will be oh-so-effective pitted against the tanks, armoured aircraft, long-range artilliary and and armed robots of the entire US armed forces. Good luck with that.
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