njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011
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There is real concern with this, countries like China are absolutely paranoid about censoring the net, and in theory they could try and use economic blackmail to get countries like the US and others to censor the internet to make themselves happy (for example, block sites critical of the Chinese regime), or have the saudis threaten oil embargoes and the like to get other countries to filter out stuff their 10th century culture doesn't like.....
The net is a tough place, and it harbors a lot of bad things, like the kind of sites that drove the two douchebags up in Boston to do what they did and figure out how to do it, too, or the sites with pirated material or child porn, etc......but what the Chinese government in their paranoia doesn't realize is that censoring anything is a disaster area, to try and 'maintain stability', it also hinders innovation and creativity which the net helps spawn (it is no surprise that China, despite all the blather about being an economic powerhouse, has pretty much done nothing in terms of innovation; put it this way, Chinese R and D is pretty much industrial sabotage and copying).
We have the same problem here, the religious right and the GOP have tried many times to censor the net, and fortunately failed (anyone remember the "Child Protection Act" back in the 90's? It was so bad, so broad, that Scalia, of all people, said it amounted to basically a writ to censor the net about almost anything, that fundamentalists could argue discussions about evolution hurt their kid's faith and therefore should be blocked, atheists could argue religious cites are nothing more then mindless brainwashing of kids minds, and so forth), the GOP at one point was really big about 'bringing the net' into the realm of the public airwaves, trying to pass laws making ISP's responsible for content and so forth......the religious right made clear that if passed that they would go after non porn sites, like Planned Parenthood's websites (for promoting abortion and birth control) or sites with information about gays and lesbians that didn't spout the "Christian" idea it was a mortal sin, destroyer of society, etc....
You also get things like Englands idiotic libel laws, that quite frankly, every country should refuse to recognize the decisions of british courts until they finally amend them (basically, you can get huge judgements for libel even if what you wrote about is true, if they decide it hurt the 'victim'. In most countries, to win libel judgements, you have to prove that what they wrote was false and more importantly, that they published it knowing it was false, to deliberately wreck the reputation of the person they were writing about. The turds in the Saudi Royal family do that all the time, and what it does is cause publishers and writers to be cowed from writing the truth.....along with British cooking and dental care (and British cars of the past), it is one of the 19th century things they need to fix...those laws have been used against websites in other countries, commercial sites like the online arm of journals, arguing that since people in the UK can see it, it is covered by their laws....
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