Internet censorship is alive and well...in Great Britain
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Internet censorship is alive and well...in Great Britain
I find this to be intensely troubling:
Quote:
British Internet users have been blocked from accessing an article on popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia over child pornography concerns, the country's Internet watchdog and Wikipedia said Saturday.
Britain's Internet Watch Foundation added a Wikipedia article on a heavy metal music group to its list of banned Web sites because it contained a picture of a nude girl judged to be pornographic, foundation spokeswoman Sarah Robertson said.
Because the foundation's list is widely used by British Internet service providers to filter out child pornography and other illegal content, adding the site to the list effectively made it inaccessible to the vast majority of the British public. Robertson estimated that the foundation's list affected 95 percent of British residential Internet users.
It is one thing to pass a body of laws that are intended to protect children; it is another thing entirely for an institution or organization to undertake censorship of what you are allowed to view on the 'net.
Freedom of expression is dying throughout the western world, because people no longer want to be free. More properly, every individual wants to be free, but has all kinds of reasons why the people around him shouldn't be free - and acts on those reasons.
Not all British internet users were blocked. Censoring the page and image in question should only upset pedophiles. Did Wikipedia need to show the actual album cover instead of just mentioning it? After all, when the news media report on x number of child porn images being found on X's computer, they don't actually show the images.
This means two things:
1) There are always anonymous proxy servers.
2) Some people don't know how to block one picture, so they just block wikipedia instead (it was mentioned somewhere that pictuer was on external server, by the way). Which is pretty stupid.
Ask yourself: does the censoring of a slightly pornographic image of a naked 10 year old girl by a few ISPs really matter? Given the many threats to freedom in the world today, is that an example to get worked up about? Is it the thin end of the wedge to get more censorship, or the thin end of the wedge to get that sort of thing acceptable? Do you object to any degree of censorship, or do you draw the line somewhere?
Speaking of the technical part - how exactly it is possible to block just one page of wikipedia? As I understand it, this page doesn't have separate static IP address. The only thing that comes to mind is squid configuration, but what kind of ISP will provide internet access only through their proxy? There are also "transparent proxies", but, as I understand it, this wouldn't work if user uses tunnel (443 port) to access external proxy. This means it is easily bypassed. So, what is the point of all this?
On the technical side, there's no way any ISP is going to be able to block access to anything if people want to get to it. There are, and will always be, ways to get through.
On the pron part, if the image is what they're saying it is, it should be blocked in any way possible. The best way would be for Wikipedia to remove it themselves. If you start allowing even one image of nefarious nature to be displayed as "art", a precedence will be set, and it won't be long before you get whole sites dedicated to the same type of "art".
Not all British internet users were blocked. Censoring the page and image in question should only upset pedophiles. Did Wikipedia need to show the actual album cover instead of just mentioning it? After all, when the news media report on x number of child porn images being found on X's computer, they don't actually show the images.
Censoring the page and image in question should upset anyone who opposes censorship and wants to have a free and open internet.
Once the precedent is set and accepted, it can be expanded quite easily. If you look into the internet neutrality fight, you will find instance after instance of major telcos censoring internet content in the US for political or business reasons. Examples include AOL blocking emails to AOL subscribers when those emails were critical of AOL's plans to charge for emails, Verizon blocking text messages from a pro-life group to its membership, and another telco (AT&T, I believe) censoring a podcast of a rock concert when the lead singer began making anti-Bush comments on the stage.
ISPs, backbone providers, telcos - ALL of them - need to be forbidden to censor ANY content for ANY reason.
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