Internet Filtering

[xbox]

Nothing should ever be censored...It's entirely up to the site hosting the material whether it should be permitted or not, not the government or governing bodies...

Just because you believe something to be indecent, or immoral, what gives you the right to force that view on others?..Just because you and 90% of people believe something to be indecent, or immoral, what gives you the right to force that view on the other 10% of the population?..

Look back 50 years, 100 years, even 1000 years...What back then was considered to be indecent and immoral?..Things we take for granted now and think they were silly about back then...Who's to say 100 years from now people won't look back on us, and think things we want banned were silly?..

No one has the right to say what is right or wrong except yourself...If you begin extending your reach for laws and censorship beyond the protection of basic human rights, you lead down a road where change is illegal...And change has brought us to the life we cherish today...Are you claiming this is as good as it gets, and we should begin enforcing the majorities views on others to prevent their views from ever growing in numbers?..

Exactly correct.

[gmp_gmp]

It's silly to try such a thing at this point. It's extremely hard to block anything completely. If people want something, they'll get it. As it's been said before:

The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

[[cc]z@nd!]

Freedom of press obviously doesn't apply to pornography being distributed to minors, threats to national security, etc. Typical things that would be filtered. It's not like the government would ever block sites just because they can, and the sort of mindset that they would is quite dumb.

China.

also, I'm with iron_forge on this one. The state cannot be allowed to determine what it's citizens can or cannot see. You may say it's completely fine for them to filter websites known to contain child porn, but we already have a working system that takes care of this. Offendors are caught and prosecuted in the court of law, and I see no reason to establish a slow, ineffective filtering system that would be easily circumvented anyways.

A good example is my avatar. Many companies went crazy when people figured out they could use this data in a novel way and tried to scrub it from the internet, but once something's on the internet it can't leave. If a filtering system were established, it would still be trivial to access blocked information before it was blocked, or just circumvent the system. blocking content is unnecessary and unethical.

[ScottyGEE]

Just an update on recent events. Supposedly there's been a leak on websites blacklisted by the ACMA (Naturally, I'm not going to link to the site, one that they've already threatened its linking and second, it contains links to despicable sites). The government is currently trying to allow the ACMA to have the power to block all blacklisted sites for Australia in coordination with all ISP's with no opt-out; for the purpose of fighting child pornography and other illegal things. Hosting a link on a website to any site on the blacklist can give you an $11,000 fine/day its being hosted. Also the ACMA blacklist is not supposed to be public, so people could get the $11,000 pentalty and up to 10 years in jail without even knowing that its blocked.

What's worse is that this leak shows many sites which have nothing to do with child pornography. Poker tips, a Queensland Dentist's site as well as some pages in wikipedia, myspace and some of the top 50 most popular websites in Australia are in there.

To me, a nationwide blocking system which penalises (and possibly lands them in jail) people for attempting to access sites which are unknowingly blacklisted - where the ACMA has the power to block any site they wish just seems so open to corruption.

As the media has been saying, using as Singapore as an example, the initial conception for their internet filtering was to reduce/stop child pornography - which is fair enough as that's disgusting stuff - but soon, websites were blacklisted for talking negatively about the Royal Family, even an Australian journalist's article which had one sentence which disagreed with the Royal family.

Finally, the Government has said the list is fake. But with no proof otherwise, and their threat that anyone who links to the list could face 10 years in prison, does not really convince that its fake.


edit: One more thing. The Government is actually proposing two filters. One blocks illegal content, no opt out, the other a child protection blocker which you can opt out of. The first one is clear, the second one blocks all 18+ material. This way, parents who don't take notice of their children, can now allow the Government watch out for them.

[OwnZ joO]

I'm actually pretty anti censorship, but I do think there needs to be censorship for some things. Child porn for example needs to be censored. I don't understand how anybody could argue that exploiting children like that is a moral thing to do. So while I agree with Iron Forge on a lot of what he said, he's being too all or nothing about it.

[Tural]

I didn't see this post at the time, so I'm replying now.

China.

Thanks for paying attention to how I was specifically talking about the United States.

also, I'm with iron_forge on this one. The state cannot be allowed to determine what it's citizens can or cannot see.

Good to hear you'd rather have people die than have censorship.

You may say it's completely fine for them to filter websites known to contain child porn, but we already have a working system that takes care of this. Offendors are caught and prosecuted in the court of law, and I see no reason to establish a slow, ineffective filtering system that would be easily circumvented anyways.

Because everyone gets caught. How is more security a detriment to the legal process? It isn't. It would help said process at any rate. Flag the user when they try to hit a protected site, stop them from getting that content and direct the government to them to be caught. We should also not arrest people, they can break out of jail just like they can circumvent the system, right? Yeah, no. There's no downside to establishing such a system if it is not abused.

A good example is my avatar. Many companies went crazy when people figured out they could use this data in a novel way and tried to scrub it from the internet, but once something's on the internet it can't leave. If a filtering system were established, it would still be trivial to access blocked information before it was blocked, or just circumvent the system. blocking content is unnecessary and unethical.

A good example is not your avatar. It's not relevant at all. That's a private matter with private companies. You seem to think that there's going to be a "Hey, click me and get child pornography and national security secrets" button on the filtering system. Furthermore, being able to circumvent something does not make it unnecessary. Bike locks are unnecessary, someone can cut them. Car keys are unnecessary, a car can be hotwired. Passwords are unnecessary, they can be brute forced. A bank vault is unnecessary, you can kidnap the manager and make him open it. I could go on. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of any security that can be circumvented being unnecessary, which is complete and utter bullshit. As for unethical, again you're putting ideology over safety as I've addressed before in this thread.

[Ombre]

Tural you keep saying censorship is necessary to protect lives. When was the last time a porn site killed anyone? Some censorship may be needed to protect lives, but this is a small margin and shouldn't be used as an excuse to censor other relatively harmless material.

[Cuda]

It is harmful when theres minors involved.

[WaeV]

That's a good point. I mean, you wouldn't let a kid wander new York City at night would you? Then again, what of adults? It would be wrong to enforce a curfew on all citizens. Leave it to the parents to protect their children, don't block access to all citizens.

[Aumaan Anubis]

He'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm relatively certain that Tural's support of censorship is mostly based on the censorship of information that can threaten national security, and the censorship of websites that host child pornography. I can't imagine that he would want to censor all pornography sites.

[Cuda]

It'd be economically unwise to censor all porn on the internet. Advertisers would lose loads of money, the entire industry would be dealt a severe blow, and certain economies would collapse, namely the San Fernando Valley.

[Tural]

Tural you keep saying censorship is necessary to protect lives. When was the last time a porn site killed anyone? Some censorship may be needed to protect lives, but this is a small margin and shouldn't be used as an excuse to censor other relatively harmless material.

Freedom of press obviously doesn't apply to [...] threats to national security

Anything that is a threat to the security and safety of citizens should be subject to regulation. If you publish news that endangers troops or citizens, that news should be subject to removal. For you to claim that news should never be censored is an incredibly irresponsible assertion. If you publish news from a murderer, or from terrorists, and they find out the authorities have this information, and they change what they're doing, you're potentially putting more people at risk by letting the wrongdoers know that people are on to them. If you're hindering the abilities of authorities and the government, willingly, you need a reality check, because that is a fucked up thing to do.

Let's say we know where Bin Laden is right now. Let's say there is an operation taking place to apprehend him. Now, that plan gets leaked. A news organization comes up with it, and decides they want to break the unbelievable news of the operation to catch the most wanted terrorist in the world, and they publish it before it happens. Now he knows the operation is taking place, he has time to flee. This has happened in the past, to a lesser extent, where news organizations have listened to police radio scanners and whatnot and published information that hurts an ongoing manhunt. You're saying there should be no ability to stop these people from getting away, by stopping the publication of it? You'd rather let a terrorist or murderer get away, become bitter at the attempt, and go on to kill more people, than censor a news organization? Please tell me that is not what you mean by that comment.

Would you agree with my above comments about censorship to protect citizens, soldiers, etc? Surely if you can save lives, you should.

I think literally every post except the one you responded to explains what I'm talking about, simply looking at them could have saved the trouble of having to post this.

Everyone is saying "No censorship" essentially, talking just about pornography. There's more out there than that, and people need to realize how reckless it is to allow anything to be published.

[neverSHOUTnever]

Freedom of press should keep us safe.

does that include pron?

i want their to be more filter crap out there, sometimes mcafee doesn't censor everything i hate.

but did i hear the mentioning of child pron? whats wrong with censoring that?

and tural is right about that censorshipness.....i thought about that allot over the years.....when i would see that sort of thing on the new, i immediately thought of my self in the criminals shoes and what i would do.

[ScottyGEE]

Nothing. My worry is that the censorship is so open to corruption and huge penalties.

[OwnZ joO]

To sum up what Turals point was in his earlier post about security.

Locks keep honest people honest

Of course it's not going to stop everybody, but those who weren't necessarily going to do it would stop.
Who said something about a child porn site not killing kids. First off, I bet kids have committed suicide from being molested, second you don't have to die to be harmed... and third, the site existing supports people making the stuff.

[Danke]

Wait. So are you guys talking about censoring what ISP's provide to you? Censoring sensitive national security info from outside the US to the US seems useless because the threat isn't exactly here, and everyone else in the world has that information now anyway. And censoring information going from the US is pointless because whatever is censored should be illegal anyway, just arrest them.

All this seems like an inefficient and costly way to deal with a problem that would be better off solved directly. Instead of stopping people from viewing material, stop people from providing such material. In real life.

In terms of just general censorship of this and that, morality is subjective, so meh. If something is illegal anyway, it's illegal, you don't need censorship, you need police action. And being a fan of violent games, I know Australia crazy-loves their censorship. But that's what happens when you elect the lead singer of Midnight Oil to your parliament. I don't think he ever ended up giving it back. You and Germany are just no fun.

Just because you and 90% of people believe something to be indecent, or immoral, what gives you the right to force that view on the other 10% of the population?..

Democracy, republicanism, etc.

[Thien]

PORN IS MY LIFELINE, THEY MUST NOT TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME!

Seriously though, what's the point, what will they be accomplishing in doing this?

Either way, they ain't stopping me

EDIT: Well shit, I feel like a genius, THANKS TURAL. When I actually read what YOU wrote it made so much more sense.
BUT PORN IS STILL RELEVANT

[ScottyGEE]

I like your views Danke on the proposed mandatory filter. Blocking it, I suppose can do two things though: Stop the user from seeing the content and also flag the user to be able to prosecute them, so in a sense its just a tracking system? At the same time however,the leak of this supposed list draws attention to the stuff that they do not want anyone to see. Though if new sites pop up (which I bet they do all the time), its still just chasing people until the new site is blacklisted and people get caught. A cycle which does little to prevent it all, just slows it and possibly encourages people to go to further lengths to not get caught.

[Danke]

I like your views Danke on the proposed mandatory filter. Blocking it, I suppose can do two things though: Stop the user from seeing the content and also flag the user to be able to prosecute them, so in a sense its just a tracking system?

You're going to be essentially monitoring the internet, which is fine if you're doing it case by case, but you need a warrant and if you're going to block them from seeing the content, they'll know something is up which makes for less evidence against them.

When it comes to child pornography, you're better off letting them get it and then arresting them than stopping them and saying "HEY STOP THAT!"

A cycle which does little to prevent it all, just slows it and possibly encourages people to go to further lengths to not get caught.

Simply blocking them just encourages them to find a way around the filter (or whatever), in which case the whole plan is kind of useless.

Of course it's not going to stop everybody, but those who weren't necessarily going to do it would stop.

Child porn is illegal, I don't think we need something else to encourage people to not seek after it. They know it's illegal, and they go after it anyway.

In any case, I don't see the filter as helping stop the people producing the offending material, which makes it seem like it would be a huge waste of money.

[neverSHOUTnever]

i don't like the idea of pornography at all, but once you reach a certain age its your life to deal with, but why should those peoples choices affect me.....nvm what I'm trying to get at is too hard for me to explain....

but what i don't get is why certain things that were frowned upon ages ago, are somehow the norm for people now.....

its something we can't stop people from doing......i think i mite delete the internet =]