http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Internet-Websites-Ratings,news-3212.html
Britain's Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, believes that new standards of decency need to be applied to the Internet. He intends to discuss the matter with Barack Obama once the President-elect is signed into office next month. The "new decency" is aimed specifically at English language websites as well as Internet service providers and their lack of "child-safe" web services. He said that the Internet is "quite a dangerous place." Indeed it is. Web surfers need only to type in an address and pull up a non-regulated YouTube knock-off (of a Red nature deemed as "the Home of Porn") that offers explicit, uncensored adult material. There is no age verification. There are no (obvious) memberships. While the free world may object to ISP-based filtering, citing Freedom of Speech, children can stumble upon such websites easily. Will giving websites such as this a film-based rating solve the problem. Probably not, but it's certainly a start.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/3965051/Internet-sites-could-be-given-cinema-style-age-ratings-Culture-Secretary-says.html
Mr Burnham said: “If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now.
“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”
"The internet has been empowering and democratising in many ways but we haven’t yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around…what can be a very, very complex and quite dangerous world.”
"The best way to bail out the economy is with liberty, not with federal reserve notes." - pairunoyd
"The vision of the Austrian must be greater than the blindness of the sheeple." - pairunoyd
We don't need their "help". In fact, they can take it and go hang themselves. I think a guilotine is in order.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Indeed, god forbid these young children stumble across websites that commit the crime of questioning the government. Double plus ungood.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
"The internet has been empowering and democratising in many ways but we haven’t yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around…what can be a very, very complex and quite dangerous world.”Luckily, we have far-sighted and impartial rulers to navigate and show the way for us lesser creatures.I'm seriously offended.
Austrialia is also going to censor the Internet.
I am an eklektarchist not an anarchist.
Educational Pamphlet Mises Group
Sphairon:"The internet has been empowering and democratising in many ways but we haven’t yet got the stakes in the ground to help people navigate their way safely around…what can be a very, very complex and quite dangerous world.”Luckily, we have far-sighted and impartial rulers to navigate and show the way for us lesser creatures.I'm seriously offended.
My exact thoughts. The arrogance is on full display with that disgusting quote. It's almost like a caricature. I can't believe someone actually said it!
They really are like abusive parents in a way, except in relation to adults often more rational than themselves.
This kid doesn't agree with Britain's Culture Secretary!
Has anyone used TOR? Does it work well? This technology may become more important in the near future.
Tor doesn't work very well. In return for some degree of anonymity, you suffer badly for speed.
Does anyone know of any radical anti-censorship organizations aimed at protecting the 'net?
liberty student: Tor doesn't work very well. In return for some degree of anonymity, you suffer badly for speed. Does anyone know of any radical anti-censorship organizations aimed at protecting the 'net?
The Electronic Freedom Foundation is an anti-censorship organization
http://www.eff.org/about
So is the American Library Association
As a librarian myself I can tell you that, when it comes to anti-censorship issues, librarians as a group are about as radical as they come.
http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/intfreedom/index.cfm
anyone know what happened to my baby pic?
pairunoyd: anyone know what happened to my baby pic?
baby pic? On this site?
Jon Irenicus: They really are like abusive parents in a way, except in relation to adults often more rational than themselves.
"Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?"
-Tocqueville: What sort of Despotism Democratic Nations have to Fear
I fixed it for you. You can't hotlink from blogger.
LOL. Talk about an excercise in futility. You can`t stop internet.
The former chair of the organization behind TOR is starting such an organization. She's an anarchist herself, IIRC.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
It seems to me that most radical internet people are radical liberals( libertarians with no economic sense). Like the people that want the government to stop the internet from regulation from the greedy corporations so it can be a free democratic place for ideas to flourish. So lets get the corps. to lobby congress for "benefits", so they can be scratching each others back. It will really be neutral then won't it.
At the worst, I'd rather have corporations censor things than the government, because a boycott of a corporation is possible, boycotting government is called revolution.
Democracy is nothing more than replacing bullets with ballots
If Pro is the opposite of Con. What is the opposite of Progress?
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore (EFF)
It cannot be stopped!
http://libregamewiki.org - The world's only encyclopedia on free(as in freedom) gaming.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Juan:Unless your ISP is doing the censoring...
That never stopped Piratebay. Heck, everytime they tried blocking it or taking it down, it only got more popular.
Then everybody will start using Freenet instead. That is, until they ban cryptography altogether. And then we'll use steganography to conceal cryptography. Only totalitarianism will have a chance to stop it.
Freenet website: What is Freenet? Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack. Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.
What is Freenet?
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.
Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.
Wikipedia: Encrypted Payloads Detecting a probable steganographic payload is often only part of the problem, as the payload may have been encrypted first. Encrypting the payload is not always done solely to make recovery of the payload more difficult. Many encryption techniques have the desirable property of making the payload appear much more like well-distributed noise, which can make detection efforts more difficult, and save the steganographic encoding technique the trouble of having to distribute the signal energy evenly (but see above concerning errors emulating the native noise of the carrier). [...] Conclusions and Further Action Obtaining a warrant or taking other action based solely on steganalytic evidence is a very dicey proposition unless a payload has been completely recovered and decrypted, because otherwise all the analyst has is a statistic indicating that a file may have been modified, and that modification may have been the result of steganographic encoding. Because this is likely to frequently be the case, steganalytic suspicions will often have to be backed up with other investigative techniques.
Detecting a probable steganographic payload is often only part of the problem, as the payload may have been encrypted first. Encrypting the payload is not always done solely to make recovery of the payload more difficult. Many encryption techniques have the desirable property of making the payload appear much more like well-distributed noise, which can make detection efforts more difficult, and save the steganographic encoding technique the trouble of having to distribute the signal energy evenly (but see above concerning errors emulating the native noise of the carrier).
[...]
Obtaining a warrant or taking other action based solely on steganalytic evidence is a very dicey proposition unless a payload has been completely recovered and decrypted, because otherwise all the analyst has is a statistic indicating that a file may have been modified, and that modification may have been the result of steganographic encoding. Because this is likely to frequently be the case, steganalytic suspicions will often have to be backed up with other investigative techniques.
As you can see, there isn't much the government can do. Heh, you could say technology obsoleted government in addition to economy :).
Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu: Then everybody will start using Freenet instead. That is, until they ban cryptography altogether. And then we'll use steganography to conceal cryptography. Only totalitarianism will have a chance to stop it. Freenet website: What is Freenet? Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack. Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is. Wikipedia: Encrypted Payloads Detecting a probable steganographic payload is often only part of the problem, as the payload may have been encrypted first. Encrypting the payload is not always done solely to make recovery of the payload more difficult. Many encryption techniques have the desirable property of making the payload appear much more like well-distributed noise, which can make detection efforts more difficult, and save the steganographic encoding technique the trouble of having to distribute the signal energy evenly (but see above concerning errors emulating the native noise of the carrier). [...] Conclusions and Further Action Obtaining a warrant or taking other action based solely on steganalytic evidence is a very dicey proposition unless a payload has been completely recovered and decrypted, because otherwise all the analyst has is a statistic indicating that a file may have been modified, and that modification may have been the result of steganographic encoding. Because this is likely to frequently be the case, steganalytic suspicions will often have to be backed up with other investigative techniques. As you can see, there isn't much the government can do. Heh, you could say technology obsoleted government in addition to economy :).
Crypto-anarchism for the win!
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
the best solution to the problem you describe is to banish his website, infect his computer and prosecute him criminally. Of course this would force you to take another look at the deviant gay community and all kinds of other predatorial websites; gambling, loansharking, etc. Who are you really trying to protect your own game you run on your mark?
the internet is already censored by lord gates and hinass buffet, libraries, schools, the fed all use the software where you can putup anything you want as long as you keep in under one page. They have even banded the boy scouts because of their wicked response to allowing sexual predators as scout leaders. Schools are sued and lose if thry bar the sexual predator from teaching our children, but what the hell, they're only put looking for a mate, you know how some people are about marrying virgins
As far as people who try to censor through gatekeeping, there's usually aways around to get around them (e.g. proxies) and they fight an uphill battle in their attempt to control infromation. In the end, the internet is far too massive for even a government to be able to inhibit free speech of it; plus free speech always finds a way to get, look at the ancien regime in France even they couldn't prevents Voltaire and the philosphes from gaining an audience.
Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.
- Edmund Burke