Brown Ajah's Banned Books Week: Internet Censorship

[Ludmian]

The Internet has changed our life in a way that most people would have though impossible a couple of decades ago. Just one click of a mouse, and you can read news from all over the world, watch videos or talk to people you would have never met in real life. The Internet has allowed a free exchange of ideas that is difficult, if not impossible, to suppress. Thus, it has become one of the most important instruments of free speech.

 

But as it is so often in life, good things come hand in hand with bad things, and the change the Internet has brought with it is not 100% positive. The birth of the Internet has made copyright violations easy, damaging the music, movie and publishing industries. Things like hate speech or child porn have also found a (more or less) safe haven in many places all over the net.

 

No wonder that in most places attempts are made to somehow regulate Internet content. Here is a map from Wikipedia:

 

 

The places where there's no censorship are marked in blue. As you can see, this are mostly places where there's little, if any, Internet anyway. Other places make attempts to regulate the Internet. These regulations range from 15-years' imprisonment for the illigal possession of a modem in Burma or absolutely denying Intenet access to population (except some officials) in North Korea to occasionally taking down some content that is most likely justly illegal anyway in a civilised world. Sites like Google or YouTube also occasionally ban or make it difficult to access content that they consider objectionable.

 

As is with other discussions, case studies will follow, but first I'd like to ask for your opinion in general. Should the Internet be regulated/censored, and if it should, then in what way?

[Seryanne]

I think the internet is difficult to regulate. By it's nature, it's a sprawling behemoth of unsorted, untagged data. Search engines etc try to make sense of it, and some sites are self-regulating - eg, requiring date of birth to proceed, geoblocking so certain sites aren't available (either from a site, or an ISP/country level)

 

I think that some sites - pornography sites or places to buy weapons/medication/chemicals etc should be regulated, but I also feel that governments etc don't seem to understand how it all works. The Australian filtering/censorship legislation, for example shows a lot of ignorance of how easy it would be to accidentally block safe sites, and how easy it also is for someone who really wants to access content to actually do so.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

 

What I can't figure out is an equitable way of censorship/internet filtering outside of a household-by-household basis. any ideas?

[Ludmian]

It remains illegal in Australia to host material that is rated X18+ or that has been refused classification. By contrast, X18+ material is legal to buy and own in Australia if it is in print or other traditional form.

 

I don't undertsnad Australians at all.  ::)

 

Israeli laws regarding the holocaust denial apply to the Internet as well as to traditional media. Sites which deny the holocaust cannot be hosted in Israel and Israelis who attempt to use the Internet for the purposes of holocaust denial face arrest and imprisonment.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship#Israel

 

What do you think of this regulation? Is it likely to work, given the nature of the Internet?

 

Google.cn formally opened on Jan. 27 this year, and human-rights activists immediately logged onto the new engine to see how it worked. The censorship was indeed comprehensive: the first page of results for "Falun Gong," they discovered, consisted solely of anti-Falun Gong sites. Google's image-searching engine — which hunts for pictures — produced equally skewed results. A query for "Tiananmen Square" omitted many iconic photos of the protest and the crackdown. Instead, it produced tourism pictures of the square lighted up at night and happy Chinese couples posing before it.

 

Google's timing could not have been worse. Google.cn was introduced into a political environment that was rapidly souring for American high-tech firms in China. Last September, Reporters Without Borders revealed that in 2004, Yahoo handed over an e-mail user's personal information to the Chinese government. The user, a business journalist named Shi Tao, had used his Chinese Yahoo account to leak details of a government document on press restrictions to a pro-democracy Web site run by Chinese exiles in New York. The government sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Then in December, Microsoft obeyed a government request to delete the writings of Zhao Jing — the free-speech blogger I'd met with in the fall. What was most remarkable about this was that Microsoft's blogging service has no servers located in China; the company effectively allowed China's censors to reach across the ocean and erase data stored on American territory.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html?pagewanted=8&ei=5090&en=972002761056363f&ex=1303444800

 

How do you like the fact that big companies cater for the needs of dictatorial governments?

 

The IDF spokesman's office said that some of the videos it had posted to the channel had been removed by YouTube.

 

"We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip," the IDF spokesman's office said.

 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iD7wPYGAgmDTrvSjtyTx0cs9PEJw

 

Unfortunately, it's already to late to start a campaign for the boycotte of YouTube.  :(

[MashinShin al Mashiara]

This is actually a pretty big topic right now in my children's school district.  while I'm old school and prefer my kids do all their research via books and the library, the teachers want the kids to have at least one internet resource as part of their research.  As a parent I have all sorts of parental locks and filters on to try and prevent access to inappropriate sites but these sites have managed to come up with ways around such filters and parental locks.  How do you regulate something so massive?  I've been reading up on the internet and its effects on our society (from a psychological standpoint) and I'm frankly shocked at the negative impact that it is having.  WoW was the number two reason for divorces in America followed very closely by internet porn just a few years ago.  Identity theft is on the rise and so is stalking.  It is frightening as a parent to expose your kids to such a viable threat and yet you know that you can't protect them from everything.  The internet has some really good points, such as being able to find information from around the world for whatever topic you are trying to research.  You can keep in touch with friends and familly far more easily than you can via snail mail.  Kids can get help with any and all school assignments and find great study tips to help them retain more information and do better on tests.  But there is still the downside of sites like Myspace and Facebook making it so easy for internet stalkers to hunt their prey. 

 

I'm all for regulating the internet, especially when it comes to identity theft issues and stalkers...but it seems like an insurmountable task to come up with feasible and workable methods for doing this. 

[Samuraiflip05]

I agree that censoring the web would be insurmountable.  The current system is inadequate, but it does well enough for the more legitimate sites(Adult sites too).  There is software or ways to set computers to block sites that contain certain words.  I am not sure if these are available for personal use, or only for businesses. 

[Ticondrius]

I have been online, and an active _citizen_ of the Internet since the early 90s, when it was first turned public.  I came from the BBS systems, I browsed the "web" with tools such as Archie, Gopher, and NSCA Mosaic, and I remember the day we finally got graphics in webpages.

 

The Internet began as a benevolent collection of FREE resources.  The only thing that cost you, was hardware, and a dialup connection account.

 

ICQ was a free resource created by, SURPRISE!, some Jews at College in Tel Aviv.  Now?  ICQ is owned by AOL, and is splattered with ads.

 

Why did the Internet turn sour?  Well, stop for a second...did it?  The Internet was to be a free and open means to exchange ideas and share information.  The evil came when people realized it could be exploited for income without acknowledging the spirit in which it was created.  The Commercial Internet was born.

 

The real Internet is still here.  Every time we use something free, instead of pay for another service that does the same thing...  Every time we share ideas on a forum, in email, or other forms...  It's still here.  So what's the deal with censorship?

 

 

Let's pick a nice identifiable target.  Pornography.  It's real, it's online, and it's nothing new.  200 years ago, there were books and paintings of art...and even more accessible, the "cat houses".  100 years ago, much the same, but magazines were beginning to appear.  Playboy is founded in the teens and twenties of the 1900s.  The modern syndicated pornography business is created.  Sure, it's a bit tough for a kid to walk into a store and buy a playboy magazine, but there were always shoplifters...maybe not the good kids, but the less moral ones...who'd then show it to the others when they got somewhere to hide.  Then the 60s come along...old moral boundaries break down, and the pornography industry explodes.  Now there's material for both sexes, and confused gender orientations.  Is it any wonder that a business of images, and now sound and video, would move on to a superior medium?  It's the fault of society in general, not that of the Internet.

 

The Internet should remain uncensored.  Parents need to educate their children on what to avoid, and the truth as to why.  People of morals will avoid the things that should not be given attention.  

 

I don't want a big brother watching out for me online.  I do not want my responsibility for myself to be taken away.  I am a thinking, living human being!  I am NOT an automaton!  

 

I REJECT reality as it's presented to me, and I bloody well substitute my own!  Deny what the commercialized entities of the Internet try to tell you, and you deny their ability to control your mind.  Don't fall into the censorship trap.  There's no need for it.

[MashinShin al Mashiara]

While I do agree with Ticondrius on a few of his points.  There does need to be a way to keep inappropriate material from popping up when you are trying to research a medical condition.  I had a friend who was doing online research for a company he worked for.  He was researching a part for one of the A/C units his company installs.  As he is doing a search for this part he ends up with twenty porn ads popping up all over the screen.  For every one he closed five more opened up.  He was so frustrated he walked into the supervisors office.  The supervisor (one of those morally superior women who think men are disgusting perverts) called her IT guy.  The IT guy tells the supervisor that my friend has been viewing porn and downloaded a virus into the system.  Now...I know that this was not the case because I worked for this company at the time.  They fired my friend on the spot.  A month later, the supervisor opens an email from her husband, unknowningly ends up with a virus on her own computer.  A couple days later she ends up with porn ads popping up all over the place when she tries to go online. 

 

While I do not wish to have big brother breathing down my neck, I do wish to have total control over what I choose to view and when I chose to view it.  I have set every parent control I could on the computer my children use for homework and still these ads come through.  I have nothing against porn, whether in a book or a magazine or online.  I do have a problem with companies who chose to hack their way past parental controls and shove it down my children's throats.  Those blocks are there for a reason and it is corporations like the porn industry that I am all for legislation making those industries accountable for violating pop-up blockers and parental controls. 

 

I do teach my children morals and ethics.  My kids are completely aware of what is and is not appropriate for them to view online and on the television.  But at the same time, I want my children to be able to do their homework with out me leaning over their shoulder making sure some perverted freak hasn't managed to hack into some website and cause porn adds to pop up all over the computer. 

 

[Ticondrius]

There is a very simple way of blocking almost 100% of all advertising online.  There are sites that keep a list of known advertising domains.  They can provide you with a HOSTS file that makes your PC try to look on your own PC for those ads...resulting in 404 errors every time, without disrupting the actual content.

 

Avoidance and protection always is at the user level.  No one is responsible for you, but you.  ;)

 

Sorry if I come across as something of an extremist...but this is an issue near and dear to my heart for many years.

[MashinShin al Mashiara]

Lol  I learned a valuable lesson after MSN gave me their site to check for the MSN virus...only the MSN site was full of viruses. 

 

I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps it is better to do research the old fashioned way....go to the library and look in a book :look  I've never really trusted the internet and as time goes by I find that my instincts are proving more and more accurate.  Your not the first person that has told me about a site that can guarantee my computer will be ad proof...and several of those sites need to download something on to your computer or attach something to your browser, and those somethings usually end up being viruses.  I actually tried one of those sites...yep blocked the pop-ups but I ended up several nasty viruses as a result.  I just keep a close eye on what my kids are looking at on the internet.  Their friends call me a nazi mom :lol

[Ticondrius]

Actually, you can do it yourself.  :)  The sites I'm talking about only give text lists, nothing to download.

 

Look for your HOSTS file.  It is in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ on a Windows XP machine, I think it's the same place in Vista and Win7, though under those you must be the admin and will need to do some jiggerypokkery to allow you to write to the file when you're done editing it.  I've never been a big Vista fan, so I've never used it long enough to know how.

 

At any rate, if you find an add you don't like, find out what domain serves it, like www.pornads4u.com or some such.  Then, in the HOSTS file, simply add a line to the bottom that looks like this:

127.0.0.1        www.pornads4u.com

 

Then save the changes.  It's a text file, so you can edit it with notepad.

 

Now, whenever your browser tries to request any content from that domain, it will look for it on your PC instead, but of course it won't find it....soo...blammo...blocked.

 

You can do this for ads, sites you want to be off limits and pretty much anywhere you want locked out 100%.  If your kids use your PC on normal user accounts, they can't edit the HOSTS file to unblock things either, even if they know how and where to do it.

 

Hope that helps.  Remember, Internet security begins with education in the home...not big brother doing it for you.

[LilyElizabeth]

Tico, I mostly agree with you. I have never put parental controls of any kind on our computers. My kids know not to look at porn and stuff, because I will find out. Once they start spamming you, you can't hide any more. As for those pop-ups, we don't get them. I guess our pop-up blockers catch them. Either that, or my security programs are doing their job. I'd rather handle the security of my family myself than trust the government to do it. That's for sure.

 

Mashin, I'm the opposite of you. I school my daughter online, and I'd rather just use internet resources for her research. I hate it when we have to go to the library and do it the old-fashioned way. I want my kids to be up with technology and do things the modern way.

 

 

[Ticondrius]

Don't forget Lilly...sometimes just the experience of opening an old book is sweet in itself.  :)

 

I had the pleasure of doing my Shakespeare for high school from a copy of the First Folio.  Doing that work online just doesn't have the same feel.

[LilyElizabeth]

Don't worry. My daughter is a book-a-holic. She loves to read, and I've exposed her to several classics, mostly children's literature, but we just bought Jack London's White Fang, so she's moving on up. And yes, we've covered Shakespeare a little. She's young yet for that.

 

I just think we need to know how to do research on the Internet.

 

 

 

 

[Samuraiflip05]

Yeah, that's part of the reason I have avoided getting to hopeful for a kindle.  I like old books.  ;D

[LilyElizabeth]

Books are like men. I don't care too much about their age. It's whether or not they excite me.  ;)

 

(And I can't believe I actually said that!  :o)

 

 

[Ticondrius]

0_o  Books are like women, if there's not much to them, you don't read them again.  But the true masterpieces, you keep for life and go back over again and again, always finding something you missed before, increasing the pleasure of the reading.

[Seryanne]

Books are like stories, but typeset, printed and bound.

 

[Bursius]

I have been talking up the WoT books to a friend who is visually impaired.  It turns out she can and did order audio books 1 - 4 of the series from a program of some sort run by Cleveland, Ohio.  It is all for free on her part and we will be discussing the books as soon as they arrive and she can listen to them.  Time till arrival is about 2 days.

 

Sorry censor hounds, there is little to get into a lather about in the WoT series.