censorship
oracknows | January 1, 2014This is not what I wanted to write about for my first post of 2014, but unfortunately it's necessary—so necessary, in fact, that I felt the obligation to crosspost it to my not-so-super-secret other blog in order to get this information out to as wide a readership as possible.
I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Facebook. On the one hand, I like easily how it lets me stay in contact with family and friends across the country, people whom I would rarely see more than once or twice a year, if even that. On the other hand, I have the same privacy concerns that many other…
stoat | January 18, 2012Well, it has finally happened - I've decided to make a place to keep all the comments I don't publish because they are noise, stupid, or whatever. And I'll take the opportunity to add here all the ones I feel obliged to partially censor, for whatever reason (other than simple gross personal attacks, which will still just get redacted out).
Commercial linkspam will still be just junked; I've included an example of that for your entertainment.
To add: you're welcome to comment here, if you like. Obviously, comments that are simply stupid will just stay in the comment thread and won't be moved…
sastyk | February 9, 2010I have nothing to do with the recent kerfuffle about civility and comment policies that has been meandering through science blogs, but a large quantity of posts on the subject on a largeish number of blogs has, I admit, gotten me thinking about my own comment policies. Since I often get queries, often in personal email, about my comment policies, particularly why I let X or Y person say what they do, I thought it might be useful to make my comment policy more explicit.
My basic philosophy towards commenters is that I don't censor and I don't ban except under extreme provocation. In over 5…
evolvingthoughts | May 4, 2009The host ISP of Electronic Frontiers Australia has been served a take-down notice for linking to an R-rated "blackbanned" site, itself not in Australia, in a page that was a political comment on the merits (or demerits, rather) of mandatory internet filtering in Australia. I put the entire text of their notice below the fold. This is exactly what we were told would never happen by the minister. It is exactly what everybody who ever thought for ten minutes on the subject knew would happen.
EFA gets link removal notice
Posted by Colin Jacobs | Censorship, Mandatory ISP Filtering | Tuesday 5…
evolvingthoughts | April 30, 2009From the New York Times:
The Internet is no longer just an essential channel for commerce, entertainment and information. It has also become a stage for state control — and rebellion against it. Computers are becoming more crucial in global conflicts, not only in spying and military action, but also in determining what information reaches people around the globe.
The article notes that a number of repressed groups, including Women in Iran, the Falun Gong in China and so forth, are making hacks available to evade internet filtering. About time, too...
evolvingthoughts | April 3, 2009Oklahoma lawmakers are singling out the visit by Richard Dawkins to talk about evolution on campus at OU, but they're not censoring it, right? Just making academics fear for their funding, and perhaps jobs, but seeking all documentation about the visit. Just this visit, mind. Piers Hale, a historian of science at OU, is interviewed in the TV story (which means he gets about sixteen words to express a complex subject.
evolvingthoughts | March 27, 2009Pope rewrites medical science to suit Catholic dogma. Film at 11.
Australian government censorship website hacked. I'm not laughing, really.
evolvingthoughts | March 25, 2009Some links and issues I have come across lately.
Those who read this and my other blog know that I am deeply opposed to internet censorship. Recently, Wikileaks put up a leaked list supposed to be the list being used in Australian trials of what will be a mandatory blacklist of URLs. First the minister said it wasn't the list, then he said it had some similarities, and now he says it's substantially the right list but there have been edits, but that's not my point. Now, in Germany, a Wikileaks host has been raided at the behest of a German minister. It's even possible that the Australian…
evolvingthoughts | March 18, 2009I'm posting this on my American blog because the Australian government, through the Australian Communications and Media Authority is fining people on Australian sites who give the links below the fold $11,000/day. Pretty well everything I feared about censorship by the internet filter and heavy handed government action is coming true.
First of all, it transpires that only one bureaucrat at ACMA is required to block and ban a site, with no further oversight or redress. Second, it turns out that yes, ordinary and popular pornography sites are being blocked, so that if the filter becomes…
evolvingthoughts | March 17, 2009I urge people to go read Russell Blackford's submission to the Human Rights consultative committee in Australia. It deals with the changes and challenges to civil liberties in the modern era and although Australia-focussed, it generalises well once you get past our odd spelling conventions and local events.
razib | March 10, 2009There are several questions regarding speech which which have huge sample sizes in the GSS:
SPKRAC (Allow Racist to Speak), SPKHOMO (Allow Homosexual to Speak), SPKCOM (Allow Communist to Speak) and SPKATH (Allow Anti-Religionist to Speak) all have sample sizes of 53,000. This means that one can look for trends at a relatively granular scale. I decided to check how people lined up as a function of Age, belief in God, political views and intelligence (vocabulary). Lots of charts below.
A key:
1) Age goes from 18-89, left to right.
2) God goes from (left to right) atheist, to agnostic, to…
evolvingthoughts | December 29, 2008In the final chapter of Terry Pratchett's Eric, the wizard Rincewind and the boy Eric are climbing out of hell on steep steps.
He looked down at the broad steps they were climbing. They were something of a novelty; each one was built out of large stone letters. The one he was just stepping onto, for example, read: I Meant It For The Best.
The next one was: I Thought You'd Like It.
Eric was standing on: For The Sake Of The Children.
"Weird, isn't it?" he said. "Why do it like this?"
"I think they're meant to be good intentions," said Rincewind. This was meant to be a road to Hell, and demons…
evolvingthoughts | December 16, 2008The title is the title of a nice essay at Crikey. I especially like this:
Bernadette McMenamin of ChildWise, you've crossed the line, defaming everyone who’s protested the government’s plans. "Most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child p-rnography," you said. How dare you!
Ms McMenamin, to really stop child abuse we need to spend our resources efficiently. Let's run through it one more time. And let's skip those hysterical, made-up "statistics" you still peddle. Child abuse is bad enough without heading into your…
evolvingthoughts | December 15, 2008Here's an excellent discussion by Lawrence Lessig on the creeping nature of regulation through copyright. Quite apart from anything else it's an amazing use of presentation software. Sure, it's 2002, but things have only got worse...
evolvingthoughts | December 14, 2008Here's an article, by MSN no less, that explains the problems with broad filtering. A fellow named Herman Libshitz can't get an email account from Verizon because his name contains "shit". Residents of Scunthorpe in the UK apparently have similar problems. God only knows what the residents of Testiclebreastpenisvaginaville can do...
evolvingthoughts | December 11, 2008At the other blog here and here , the latter a plea for a Human Rights Act.
evolvingthoughts | December 7, 2008So it looks like Australia won't be the sole idiot child of the Internet. FCC chair Kevin Martin wants... you guessed... an "opt out" smut filter at the ISP. In your face American First Amendment!
All you smug Mericans, wipe of that goofy smile, now, OK?
evolvingthoughts | December 6, 2008At my other blog here.
Also see Ars Technica:
Here's an idea: if the Australian government actually finds child porn, nuclear bomb making manuals, and the like on the Internet, why not do their best to find the perpetrators and put them behind bars? That way we get to keep our free speech and have less crime and terrorism, rather than less of the former without actually reducing the latter. Then again, imposing restrictions on what local taxpayers can do is a lot easier than tracking down and rounding up international criminals and terrorists, and the filtering plan is moving forward despite…