Posts Tagged ‘censorship’
Ah, what a beautiful thing to see a great website so many people depend on willing to stand up and suspend their service in protest against evil . . .
Interesting to see Google only went halfway with their protest . . .
I was a little disappointed to see Google’s wouldn’t go so far as to suspend their service, but as I thought about it, it’s understandable, really – Wikipedia has the unique advantage that no other site anywhere provides what they provide as far as being a one-stop for any sort of knowledge imaginable, but if you need to do a search and Google has shut itself down in protest, that’s not going to stop you from searching, you just go somewhere else and who knows if once you go elsewhere you might never come back. So I’m willing to cut Google some slack for not completely shutting itself down today.
UPDATE: Excellent explanation of why Google is against the draconian measures of SOPA and PIPA and a cool graphic on just how many of us are with them.
Oh by the way, you remember Chris Dodd, the guy who did more to cause the housing crisis than any other person in America except for maybe Barney Frank? Well this guy is now chairman of the MPAA, and check his quotation here, an instant inductee to the Hall of Fame of Irony and Idiocy:
[Shutting down their services in protest] is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power . . .
source: MPAA Press Release
This guy! Talking about “abuse of power”? This from a guy who supports Chinese-style totalitarian control of the Internet in America?
So basically, he says it’s irresponsible for a website to shut down IT’S OWN SERVICE if they choose to do so, but he thinks it’s perfectly okay for our Federal Government Overlords to have the power to shut down any website they may see fit? Oh yeah, give the government dictatorial powers and nothing irresponsible could ever happen, you’ll never see major websites targeted for their politics or their owners bullied one way or another under the threat of a possible shutdown and I’m sure you’d never see that kind of power used to stomp little sites out of existence before they get too big for anyone to notice.
He’s upset with Wikipedia because they shut down a service of their own creation???
In Chris Dodd’s world, I bet you not only should the government have the power to shut down any website they see fit to shutting down, but I bet you he’d also give the government power to force a website to stay online at their demand or risk of fines and imprisonment.
Hit the Wikipedia page, type in your zip and call your representatives.
Victory for Free Speech in "Irvine 11" Trial
The case:
Ten Muslim students who are on trial for disrupting Israeli ambassador Michael Oren during an appearance at UC Irvine in effect acted as censors, a prosecutor argued in closing statements Monday. In front of a packed Santa Ana courtroom, Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Dan Wagner told jurors that the protesters interfered with Oren’s right to free speech last year when, one by one, they stood and shouted as the ambassador tried to give a planned address on U.S.-Israeli relations.
The verdict?
After more than two days of deliberation, an Orange County jury on Friday found 10 Muslim students guilty of two misdemeanors to conspire and then disrupt a February 2010 speech at UC Irvine last year by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
Twitter is in full meltdown mode right now with people hysterically tweeting it’s the end of free speech, it’s the end of Democracy, etc., but without a doubt, this verdict is a victory for free speech.
California law is quite clear about it, an organization or university has every right to invite a speaker and expect that speaker will be able to exercise their right to free speech and speak their mind without being censored and shouted down by people who don’t agree with their message.
The emails which encouraged these students to show up and shout the ambassador down warned them to be prepared because they would probably be arrested, so they knew full well what they were doing was against the law (a misdemeanor) in California. That’s the law and the jury came back with the correct verdict, and it would be the correct verdict regardless if the speaker was an ambassador for Israel, a member of the PLO or even a spokesperson for NAMBLA.
There’s an even more important question people crying about the end of free speech should be asking themselves, however: if this is your cause, do you really think this is any way to win people over to your side?
I’m sure the people whose every other words are “Zionist this” and “Zionist that” were pumping their fists triumphantly at the video of the Israeli ambassador being shouted down and I’m sure the Irvine 11 are going to be like rock stars among their activist peers when they return to campus after their suspensions, but outside of your small circle, do you really think you made anyone else more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians?
This is a university. A university is a place where young minds (hopefully) come to listen to and consider diverse opinions. A university is a place that’s supposed to foster debate in the name of seeking knowledge and greater understanding and you know it’s an absolute given that there was a question and answer session planned for the ambassador after he made his remarks.
Here’s a crazy idea: How about acting like bright-minded, intelligent people, letting the man speak and then nailing him with some devastating questions at the Q & A?
Face it, shouting people down is a complete and total DEBATE FAIL.
Now there may be some people who will find in the verdict an opportunity to nurture their secretly cherished persecution complexes, so hooray for them, but in the big scheme of things, the Irvine 11 has done nothing but embarrass themselves and their cause.
*** UPDATE ***
The sentences came in and the Irvine 11 will get no jail time and 3 years probation with community service. That’s Goldilocks right there, not too harsh, not too lenient. Let’s just hope the next time we hear from these individuals, it will be in hearing them take part in an intelligent debate.
Source: Electronic Infitada
If you’ve ever read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, at the turn of the last century, when businesses were left to their own devices, the state of the meat packing industry was absolutely horrific. In the wake of the public outcry over the conditions portrayed in Mr. Sinclair’s book, the government regulation that ensued was well needed, so you won’t get any argument from me that there’s never a time when the government needs to be involved in certain industries to ensure that cutting costs and maximizing profits doesn’t result in endangering the public.
When we’re speaking of government regulation, however, there’s a gargantuan difference between government regulation of something as cut and dried as, “is the food safe?” or “is the building safe?” and putting the Internet as we know it under government control. The FCC now seems poised to do just that in appointing themselves as the Overlords of the Internet.
When it comes to this impending government control of the Internet, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, why do people feel compelled for the government to come in and control the Internet when there’s nothing broken that needs to be fixed in the first place? Why this left-wing compulsion towards placing the government in charge of everything?
When speaking of business and government, many liberals will always see business as the greater of two evils or perhaps the one and only evil out of the two, but for my liberal friends with so much distrust for business and so much faith in government, do you not remember your left-wing pride in protesting an American government at war in Southeast Asia, holding the Nixon White House to account for the abuses of Watergate, or calling for an even more recent administration to stand charges for war crimes? This is the same government you would allow to place itself in charge of the Internet?
If you judge it from the perspective of history, it makes no sense at all to always place all your faith in governments over business. All you have to do is look at the last hundred years to see that for every food safety horror and BP oil spill in this world you can find horrors a million times greater, and I mean that literally – horrors a million times greater – that have been perpetrated by governments on humanity.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Overlord of the Internet
It’s kind of scary to think that every single totalitarian government in the world has taken control of their people’s access to the Internet, and now our government plans to do the same. Even scarier to see our own government using the exact same rationale as the totalitarian governments, arguing that government control of the Internet is in “the public’s best interest”. Do you seriously doubt we could end up on the slippery slope to Chinese-style control of the Internet, simply becuase it’s OUR government? That OUR government is nothing like the government of the Chinese and how dare anyone question the noble motives of OUR benevolent leaders?
Perhaps it’s best we remind ourselves that this great nation of ours, this shining city upon a hill whose beacon of light guides freedom-loving people everywhere is also the very same country where our second president, John Adams, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, four laws which were used to impose fines and jail time on people critical of the Adams Administration. Completley unconstitutional and yet it was the law of the land until it expired at the end of Adam’s term.
Perhaps we should also remember that this is the same America where our most beloved president of all presidents, Abraham Licoln, closed newspapers and jailed editors who sympathized with the South.
We’d be well served to also recall that this is also the same America that was home to the authoritarian rule of President Woodrow Wilson and his Sedition Act of 1918 which forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government. With a definition like that, you can nail pretty much anyone you want, can’t you?
Or for more recent history, simply look back on the 2008 campaign where we saw an American news media that was “90% in the tank for Barack Obama.” Those aren’t my words, by the way, those are the words of the former Chairman of the Democrat National Committee, Terry McAullife. The media was so head over heels in love that “the coverage of Barack Obama was embarrassing. It was an embarrassment.” Again, those aren’t my words, those are the words of former Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, one of the greatest stalwarts of the entire Democrat party. So with 90% of the media in their back pocket, surely you’d think the Obama Administration would be nothing but thankful. Far from it – if you look at all the sniping, griping and complaining the Obama Administration has aimed at Fox News, you’ll see that for this administration, even one questioning voice is one voice too many.
So don’t ever imagine that things would be completely different here with OUR government in control of Internet vs. the reality of every other country where the government controls the Internet. Don’t think it’s laughable to suggest we could end up like China, that it couldn’t happen simply because… well, we’re Americans!
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the governments of countries like Venezuela, Iran and China putting the clamps on their people’s use of the Internet is something totally different and that government control of the Internet could never end up like that in OUR country, because we’ve already seen the kind of authoritarian intolerance for public dissent from our own government many times in 230 short years of history.
Why even put our government in a position where it can be seduced by its own authoritarian temptations in the first place? It’s like driving a crack addict all around the neighborhood where he used to score and then dropping him off at the corner. Net Neutrality is a recipe for an Orwellian Nightmare, pure and simple, and we, as citizens, should do everything humanly possible to keep this great government of ours far, far away from the seductive idea of putting itself in control of the Internet.