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The Slippery Slope Of Censorship In ISP Filtering
from the here-it-comes... dept
We've talked about how government attempts to censor certain types of internet content tend to be a slippery slope towards more and more censorship. They usually start out with "child pornography" and then move onto other areas as the line concerning what's acceptable is blurred. It gets even worse when the government doesn't reveal what sites are censored, as it gives them pretty much free reign to block whatever they don't like -- whether or not it's actually problematic. You can watch the walk down the slippery slope over in the UK where some folks in the government are saying that, if they already filter out child porn, why not filter "radical Islamic" websites as well. Does anyone actually believe that it's websites that are turning folks into radical Islamic fundamentalists? Either way, it's not hard to go from there towards censoring other types of content that people in the government don't like, no matter how harmless it might be.
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Re:
You? Probably not so much.
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Re: Re:
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Re: Re: Re:
Both you and the author of that wiki article use the label "fallacy" a bit liberally. I think it is a device to disarm opinions you'd rather not argue with.
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Re:
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No problems with people that post information on how to make a bomb? How to build a nuke? Lists of people to target for sanctions? Thats all ok with you, because it doesn't influence anyone?
Get real.
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Common Carrier
Which means you can now sue them for:
- spam
- virus
- malware/spyware
- unwanted packets
Additionally they'll be considered accessory to crimes utilizing their infrastructure. More like a cliff then a slippery slop.
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Only if...
I mean, Muslims arn't the ONLY terrorists out there!
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Re: Only if...
But, really. This is a serious violation of freedom of speech.
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Re: OK, a tech place
The Oklahoma City bomb was nothing more than fertilizer and diesel. Farmers have been making explosives from them since the early 1900s.
No, the internet is not need to teach anyone how to build a bomb.
If you are going to troll, know what you are talking about.
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Re: Common Carrier
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Re:
I haven't seen them make that claim.
You can't have it both ways. No problems with people that post information on how to make a bomb? How to build a nuke? Lists of people to target for sanctions? Thats all ok with you, because it doesn't influence anyone?
Only your own straw man seems to be doing that.
Get real.
That's funny coming from someone holding up a straw man.
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Re: Common Carrier
They already don't have common carrier status in the US. They have the DMCA instead which is even better because it lets them filter what they want to without being liable for what they don't.
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Re: Re: OK, a tech place
Times change. A lot of those "science" books from the 1950's and 1960's have now been banned ( i.e. removed from publication and pulled from library shelves). Unauthorized copies of some of them can still be found on the internet though. See the problem?
Please go turn yourself in now.
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Re: Re: Re: OK, a tech place
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its all basic theory really, though I left chemistry at the age of 16 it was a lot of fun.
its generally thankful that the morons who want to blow people up are too stupid to do it right, the smarter people seem not to want to do it anyway.
p.s. still depressing them uk doctors who tried to blow up glasgow airport failed.. kind of said they couldn't figure it out. kind of scary as well, that these idiots were practising doctors.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: OK, a tech place
My dad got me a chemistry set when I was little, back not so long ago when you didn't have to settle for the Barbie-type ones that you couldn't hurt yourself with (or do anything interesting with) if you really tried. And he willingly showed me how to blow stuff up. Guess what? I've never killed anyone either.
I don't think that access to information should be banned just because someone may intentionally do something harmful with it, just the same way I don't think that guns, or knives, or cars, or rope, or playground equipment, or... well, you get the picture.
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chemistry is fun
My high school chemistry teacher said almost the same thing in '95: "If you don't know how to blow up your lab station by the end of the semester, you won't know enough to pass the final."
In college, everyone knew where the reactor was on campus, it was published on the school website. After Sep. 2001? No mention of it anywhere. Even the nuclear engineer students weren't told where to go til 2 weeks into the semester!
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IP filtering
Just work via an open online proxy server.
Plenty of them around.
For added obfuscation, use Firefox with the
"http refering" spoofing plug-in.
(Hey every bit of privacy helps).
We should rather worry about our Mac address.
Every device that connects to the net has one.
Consider this:
You buy a brand new laptop with wifi and pay with your credit card.
You then decide to go to a site that you shouldn't go to, so you "roam" with your brand spanking new wifi equipped laptop 20 miles away and use someone else's wireless connection.
Well don't be surprised if you get a knock on your door by some humourless gentleman in suits and darkglasses.
How they find you so quickly?
Easy... when you bought your laptop with the wifi card, you can bet your bottom dollar (or equivalent in your local currency) that the supplier/manufacturer has a list of serial numbers of the equipment you were daft enough to buy with "plastic" money.
And since our mac address is sent with every single ethernet packet we send out, well you connect the dots!
Keep in mind that US citizens are probably the most spied on (by their own government) with the possible exception of China or North Korea.
I'll bet you any amount of money that since 9/11 every ISP in the US has had some extra "boxes" installed on their premises in parallel with their servers.
Every packet of data will eventually be analyzed by Uncle Sam.
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Re: Only if...
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by 47 USC 230 the Telecommunications Act. They do not incure "CIVIL LIABILITY" for "any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected;"
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