Should there be internet censorship? (Assignment I had to do)

[Shadow_Storm56]

I spent 2 hours writing an assignment on my opinion about internet censorship, my head feels like it is going to explode and I am wondering other peoples opinions on this? if this post is in the wrong place please move  thanks.

Personally I believe that there should never be any censorship to the internet, you can prosecute consumers of content, creators of content but not the content itself. based on the fact human nature would not allow for the exsistance of a fair law to only remove content that is paticuarily horrible. Also I do not mean that content delivery sites should not have the right to remove content that violates there guidelines. What do other think? ....my head hurts  

[paddy-stone]

I agree for the most part, but it's a murky issue as it's still censorship if the materials we find particularly repugnant are blocked. Privately owned websites can censor whatever they like, according to their own TOS and local applicable laws.. and seeing as most internet sites are privately owned there is a fair amount of censoring going on already.

 

[TheKDub]

It depends on the level the censorship would be taking place at.

At the internet service provider level (including government), no censorship of any kind should be legal. (Including "free" access to specific services without also including the rest of the internet as a whole)

At the content provider level, the services are private property, and from a legal standpoint should be able to censor the content on their services as they please. In my opinion this censorship can be terrible (in the case of an entity such as YouTube allowing horrible videos on one side of the political spectrum to exist normally, but some videos not even half as bad on the other side get demonetized, taken down, etc...), though it shouldn't be illegal, since it is their platform.
I'd say it's best left to the line of legality. Anything past the line (illegal) is fair game, but anything before the line (legal) shouldn't be censored. Though that also isn't my call since it's not my property.

[LAwLz]

Depends on what you mean by "censorship".

You say that you are OK with punishing people for consuming and/or producing content, but isn't that how censorship works? I mean, making it illegal to take pictures of puppies, or look at pictures of puppies, would be censorship if you ask me.

But at the same time, the line has to be drawn somewhere. What about taking pictures of, or looking at pictures of, naked children? That should not be allowed if it's for erotic purposes, right? Does making that illegal also fall under censorship?

Would slander laws also be considered censorship? Or copyright laws?

 

Perhaps censorship is not something you can deal with in absolute terms?

[Shadow_Storm56]

15 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Depends on what you mean by "censorship".

You say that you are OK with punishing people for consuming and/or producing content, but isn't that how censorship works? I mean, making it illegal to take pictures of puppies, or look at pictures of puppies, would be censorship if you ask me.

But at the same time, the line has to be drawn somewhere. What about taking pictures of, or looking at pictures of, naked children? That should not be allowed if it's for erotic purposes, right? Does making that illegal also fall under censorship?

Would slander laws also be considered censorship? Or copyright laws?

 

Perhaps censorship is not something you can deal with in absolute terms?

I think the idea of internet censorship is very very confusing 

[LAwLz]

21 minutes ago, Shadow_Storm56 said:

I think the idea of internet censorship is very very confusing 

In what way do you find it confusing.

What censorship is?

What should and shouldn't be censored?

The difference between private and governmental censorship?

The implications of censorship?

Everything?

[TechyBen]

Is there more than one person on the internet? Then how do people interact? Do people prefer some form of managed, structured and arranged communication?

In that case, some form of managed, structured and arranged systems need to be used on the internet, as it is a form of communication.

 

Private communication can be privately managed. It can have rules and laws, but that would be a different study to the one of "the internet".

 

As the internet is publicly open, public bodies and authorities (by extension society) will wish to manage that communication. It can be mutually beneficial, or it can be one sided and harmful.

 

Just as any tool, it can be helpful or harmful. And any tool can have safety guards, or be banned entirely.

[Shadow_Storm56]

47 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

In what way do you find it confusing.

What censorship is?

What should and shouldn't be censored?

The difference between private and governmental censorship?

The implications of censorship?

Everything?

Yes

[Arika]

Depends entirely on the content.

 

terrorism recruiting website? ban it

child porn? ban it

black market weapons trading? ban it

slave trading? ban it

and many other extreme examples, but where do we draw the line? who knows, but people seem to take the all or nothing approach which doesn't really make sense to me

 

and while people will say "block something and another one will pop up in it's place" that might be the case, but you're effectively making it harder for people to find.

[AncientNerd]

2 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

Depends entirely on the content.

 

terrorism recruiting website? ban it

child porn? ban it

black market weapons trading? ban it

slave trading? ban it

and many other extreme examples, but where do we draw the line? who knows, but people seem to take the all or nothing approach which doesn't really make sense to me

 

and while people will say "block something and another one will pop up in it's place" that might be the case, but you're effectively making it harder for people to find.

What's the difference between terrorism and freedom fighter? Answer the result at the end of the war.

Child porn? what is the age limit - this is different in different countries and there are different levels of "porn" showing the face of a 18 year old woman is child porn in the middle east, while the age of consent where pictures are okay is more like 16 in parts of Asia? Who decides ?

Black market weapons trading? What is "black market"? Is it back market if I go to my brother and buy a gun? In the US no, in Europe probably, in Japan you betcha.

Slave trading? Well it's legal in some countries - I don't agree with it and I would personally ban it but...

 

Where do you draw the line? More importantly who draws the line? The US - no way, the UN hahahah they can't even agree on stopping a war, China they are doing it for their people now do you want that for the rest of the world? 

[divito]

4 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

Depends entirely on the content.

 

terrorism recruiting website? ban it

child porn? ban it

black market weapons trading? ban it

slave trading? ban it

and many other extreme examples, but where do we draw the line? who knows, but people seem to take the all or nothing approach which doesn't really make sense to me

 

and while people will say "block something and another one will pop up in it's place" that might be the case, but you're effectively making it harder for people to find.

All these points are subjective. I get that the majority of people don't like them, but censorship is censorship, which ultimately is ignorance. Not agreeing with something is one thing, but the minute you allow or enjoy the absence of certain information or perspectives, you're doing a disservice to yourself and whatever audience.

[Arika]

6 hours ago, AncientNerd said:

Snip

1. Well let's take the current world wide headline of ISIS. Theres always articles popping up with Australians, brits, Americans etc going over to fight for ISIS. Hard to call them freedom fighters
2. Based on the countries law, because you know, you have the ability to block things at ISP level, I'm not talking about world wide censorship. In Australia it's anyone under 18. There was a teen charged with child porn distribution for sending nudes of herself to people at school.she was 16. Harsh? Maybe, still technically illegal.
3. Again depends on the countries law. But for now I'll give the example of silk road
4. .... depends on the countries law. 

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, divito said:

All these points are subjective. I get that the majority of people don't like them, but censorship is censorship, which ultimately is ignorance. Not agreeing with something is one thing, but the minute you allow or enjoy the absence of certain information or perspectives, you're doing a disservice to yourself and whatever audience.

It depends on how you look at them. You might say that when something is classified as child porn is subjective, but at the end of the day we have well established laws regarding it. Since age of consent differs from region to region, a different number needed to be decided on (18) and most if not all developed countries have agreed on.

What we have to look at is the threshold where censorship is deemed a benefit for a countries citizens, rather than a drawback.

 

Removing all rules regarding porn, slander, copyright and so on would be very bad, so we need a line drawn somewhere. Where that line should be drawn is not a simple question to answer though. It is most likely something that can't be answered with just pure facts (too many variables and cases to factor in).

 

 

We can't just look at a complicated issue and go "well it's too complicated so let's just just abolish all laws surrounding it".

[Bhav]

No.

 

Stahp censoring muh clown pronz!

[AncientNerd]

15 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

1. Well let's take the current world wide headline of ISIS. Theres always articles popping up with Australians, brits, Americans etc going over to fight for ISIS. Hard to call them freedom fighters
2. Based on the countries law, because you know, you have the ability to block things at ISP level, I'm not talking about world wide censorship. In Australia it's anyone under 18. There was a teen charged with child porn distribution for sending nudes of herself to people at school.she was 16. Harsh? Maybe, still technically illegal.
3. Again depends on the countries law. But for now I'll give the example of silk road
4. .... depends on the countries law. 

The trouble is all of those points are true for a single country, but the internet by its very nature is international. So without splitting it up into separate parts by country you would need a least common denominator and someone to decide what that is - which is what my point is that you seem to have missed completely. Nobody would be happy or satisfied with a LCD because there is no majority agreement on what that LCD is. Maybe by country and maybe at the extremes but not at the edge or near edge cases which is where many/most of the arguments happen.

 

Oh and to answer you,

1. If you were of the right religion then...it isn't hard to call them freedom fighters. That's why they still get recruits, there is a subset of the world (and not a small subset) that sees them as freedom fighters. To take a historical example - US Revolution from the US side freedom fighters, from the Canadian and British side Terrorists/Rebels.

2-4. So the internet would be broken up into ~160 small pieces. This would kill the internet as we know it to censor something that you find offensive.

 

Now to be fair I do agree that some level of control will need to be done on an internet wide process because some of these things do need some control. However I am playing the devils advocate here to point out that simple solutions aren't simple and knee jerk reactions like "let every country solve it themselves" is asking for the destruction of the internet as it exists, because once there are control-points at the entry of each country more than just the above objectionable things you listed above will be censored starting with things that the current government doesn't like. Say "Fake News"...

[wasab]

Google censors many disturbing garbage(snuff films, illicit market, ect) so we already have censorship going on. 

 

I say censorship is great. Google does a lot more to combat child pornapgraohy and illicit activities on the internet than any government agency in my opionion. They are what stands between us and countless garbage that will scarred you for life on the internet. 

 

Believe me, I had been to the dark web once or twice using tor browser. Some things there are just terrifying. This is the internet without censorship.

[Levisallanon]

It's a tricky slope. Censorship means you are blocking something BEFORE it is released. But there is also regulation, this is blocking content after it is released when deemed illegal according to laws. Say for example advertisements for illegal drugs and stuff like that.

There is also something called the "right to be forgotten", where a human has the right of some things of him being removed when not deemed historically or otherwise significant enough (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten). This also regulates the internet but could help people very well. Say you send some nudes to someone and they leaked them online. If there would be no regulation or anything you could have a very hard time (ha ha ha :P) getting them off (sorry ).
 

But I think countries or organisations blocking certain parts of the internet because they feel they are lying shouldn't happen (like in turkey and china). On the other hand the rise of "fake news" and it's consequences is also worrying. And once we start blocking fake news aren't we actually doing the same as for example turkey?

One of the problems in my opinion is that we still look at the internet at nation levels and all different countries try to regulate it in their own way. But the internet isn't limited by borders (although china tries very hard with their great firewall). Personally I think these kind of things should be done globally instead.

[Majestic]

Look at Count Dankula to see where this devolves into.

 

#freedankula

[Mira Yurizaki]

In some aspects, there is already "censorship" on the internet in the form of algorithms tailoring content for you, skewing what you see. Sure, you can still find other content, but people rarely bother to find other things beyond their little bubble.

 

The problem I feel isn't so much what's being presented, but how it's being presented. Like here's a way to spin the same event:

• People gather around a clinic to protest its abortion practices.
• Pro-life people want to shut down a baby killing clinic.
• Anti-abortion advocates riot in front of a pro-choice clinic.

[Arika]

7 hours ago, AncientNerd said:

The trouble is all of those points are true for a single country, but the internet by its very nature is international. So without splitting it up into separate parts by country you would need a least common denominator and someone to decide what that is - which is what my point is that you seem to have missed completely. Nobody would be happy or satisfied with a LCD because there is no majority agreement on what that LCD is. Maybe by country and maybe at the extremes but not at the edge or near edge cases which is where many/most of the arguments happen.

 

Doesn't need to be broken up at all. Look at China's firewall. It's still the same internet but can only go to approved websites.

 

Hell even here in Australia piratebay is blocked, doesn't mean we're on a different internet

[chilicheeseburger]

Censorship? No. Censorship laws tend to always be abused to silence opposing political viewpoints,  block foreign media, etc.

 

This however does not mean that no laws should apply. 

[AncientNerd]

19 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

Doesn't need to be broken up at all. Look at China's firewall. It's still the same internet but can only go to approved websites.

 

Hell even here in Australia piratebay is blocked, doesn't mean we're on a different internet

I strongly suspect that the people in China and Iran don't feel like they are on the "same internet" as the people in Australia and Canada, since there are different sites visible, and different results found. Yes it is "the same" in that there are parts that are hard for everyone to get to i.e., piratebay, but there are parts that someone in Australia considers innocuous  that are effectively invisible to a large part of the world because they are not approved websites. That IMHO is not the same internet, that's a subset, I may only see a subset, but it's a somewhat larger subset than the more heavily censored countries do, and I would like to keep seeing that subset - at least.

[Greys0n]

no we need a good education about information acceptence and filtration, no one wants a cituation like in China with their Great china firewall

[wasab]

1 hour ago, Greys0n said:

no we need a good education about information acceptence and filtration, no one wants a cituation like in China with their Great china firewall

It’s call the golden shield project. The Chinese are pretty defensive of the name. I once ask them about the great fire wall, and they were like NO! it is call the golden shield project goddamnit!