Xanthippa's Chamberpot

All right, this is not breaking news… not by a long shot.  The article is from 2003.

 The article is about a University of Toronto project which looked at what websites were being blocked and inaccessible from within various countries.  Check out the wording in this quote:

Using ICE, Diebert and his team have discovered that pornography and government criticism are the subjects most frequently blocked by non-democratic countries. China’s blocking techniques keep out everything from Playboy.com to Friends of Falun Gong to the Dalai Lama’s website.

Chinese officials insist such techniques do not amount to censorship.

“We don’t have censorship of the Internet,” said Larry Wu, second secretary for Science and Technology at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington. “Generally, the Chinese government is for the full exchange of information. We have full freedom of speech, freedom of the press. However, we have our own understanding of what is a limitation of the freedom of speech. So we do use techniques to block certain websites, as well as we try to block spam.”

(All emphasis is mine.)  What a swell thing to do – nobody likes spam, right?

Also noteworthy quote from a different government’s official:

Nail Al-Jubier, a spokesperson for the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, admits that his government regulates Internet access.

“The overwhelming number of blocked sites are pornography,” Al-Jubier said. “Some websites that are deemed un-Islamic — those that promote violence — are blocked because of the standards of the community. Some parents don’t want their children going online if these are the things they can see.”

Why is this so interesting now?

It is the old and tired ‘we are not opressing anyone, we are only protecting children – every good parent wants that’ justification for censorship!

Yesterday, at the dentist’s office, I picked up Macleans magazine and read the following story:  ‘Guess who’s watching porn’.  As a matter of fact, the whole issue was geared that way, including the cover.  The editorial was headlined ‘Plug the porn pipeline’ and demanded government action to regulate the internet to prevent this evil.

To be clear, this is not an issue of censorship. The goal should be to prevent children from viewing what may be legally viewed by others. And parents must take responsibility for monitoring their own child’s computer usage. But there is likely a legitimate role for government and industry in tackling this problem, and with luck it won’t require the brigades of bureaucrats that are somehow necessary to managing movies and TV.

Ah, yes.  A ‘legitimate role for government and industry’ indeed!  This is the same Macleans which has been fighting for the freedom of speech in front of multiple Canadian Human Rights Commissions/Tribunals…. 

The gist of this legal battle, which has dominated the Canadian news for months?  That a ‘potential harm’ is not a justification for censoring the press!!!  And now, that same Macleans is arguing that ‘potential harm’ is a justification for censoring the internet???

Ah, but it is for the good of the children!  How could any reasonable person oppose something that will protect our children? 

So, how could such ‘regulation’ be accomplished?  Without censorship, of course, because – what was that phrase?

“We have full freedom of speech, freedom of the press. However, we have our own understanding of what is a limitation of the freedom of speech.”

Yet, many ‘Western’ audiences would not submit to censorship and site blocking this easily.  How to go about it?  Or, as Marvin from the Buggs Bunny cartoon might say: 

“But we have got to make it look legal!”

Here’s an idea!

The ISPs could offer consumers access to the internet in a new, unique way – the customer could pre-select the sites they want to allow into their homes!  These could be bundled – much like today’s cable TV is bundled – and they could pick which bundle they’d like!  Wouldn’t this be swell, to increase the customer choices like this???

Of course, being a large, well-established Canadian magazine, Macleans would make it into the ISPs bundles.  Its competition – not as likely.

Oh joy! 

As long as we have that freedom of speech and freedom of the press – and increased customer choices in one swell move, how could we possibly complain?  No, I really mean – HOW???  We would no longer have means of being heard!