> the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship
That was the result of an ISP's own blocking system.
And there is no government censorship, please stop saying that - customers are given the option to opt-out of content filters -- it's not mandatory. This has always been the case, the only difference now is that ISPs must ask subscribers.
> The government should not be in charge of what my children can or cannot read in my own home; I'm in charge of that, thank you very much.
That's exactly what this filter is though. It's not implemented by the government, it's an opt-out filter implemented by your ISP. If you want to use their defaults then it's there and free, if you want to allow access to everything then control it yourself then fine.
I don't think this should exist, but you're hurting the fight against it by not even bothering to check the most basic of facts.
> I don't. The isp is forced to censor, so they choose to also censor the entity that abused the system.
Exactly. There is a huge difference between wanting to censor your enemies and not wanting to censor anybody but being forced to, and then responding by doing so in a balanced rather than asymmetric way.
It would be best for the ISP not to be blocking anything, but given that is not a permitted option...
>I genuinely don't understand how some companies voluntarily providing filters to their customers, that those customers can chose to use or not to use, can possibly be censorship.
1) That the companies provide it "voluntarily" doesn't matter at all.
For one, the government asked them to do it (and they want to have good relations with the government, it's good for business).
Second, the government threatened them that if it's not satisfied with their "voluntary" progress, it will make it into law.
Third, even if a single company, totally voluntarily, filters content, it's still censorship. Censorship is not just about totally blocking access to content: it's also about intimidating people that want to see certain content, which is what the need to go on record and opt-in does.
And that's just for the head of a household. Do you think their spouses or kids will have much say about if they want to opt-in or not themselves?
>It's fucking insulting to people living with real censorship.
Let's not pull the "there are people having it worse" defense. Shouldn't, say, blacks protest in the USA in the sixties because other blacks had it much tougher in South Africa?
What would actually be insulting to people living with real censorship (if they cared about us in the first place, which they don't much) is that we are ready to accept any form of censorship ourselves willingly.
> some ISPs might want to block highly illegal content
There is no way - not even a theoretical way - to allow blocking of illegal content (for any definition of illegal) that won't allow for blocking of any other arbitrary content. Censorship is binary. You can accept either none of it, or all of it.
>It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites.
First, it's still censorship.
Second, the government can start supply a list of banned sites at any time.
Third, the way telcos/ISPs work with governments (and how they have to work with them, in order to get certain contracts, favors, bandwidth etc) it's very easy for government agencies to supply lists (not only of "adult content" but also of "extremist content", whatever that is), under the table. Who will let you know that the sites ISP x blocks were given to them by government agencies?
>And the filter is optional - selling adult magazines in modesty sleeves isn't censorship.
Well, the very role of "modesty sleeves" IS censorship. It might be to censor those covers from childrens eyes, and we might agree with that, but it still is censorship.
> The real worry is that this system is Government controlled
No it isn't. It's done, individually, by the ISPs. They're not all using the same software either.
> and built into everyone's internet connection.
Not everyones.
> This is why a lot of people don't like it: because we're building the machinery of censorship "for the sake of the children."
I'm fully aware of that, I'm just tired of hearing the same incorrect arguments. It only hurts a side if they lie or don't know what they are talking about.
> Seems like a slippery slope towards government censorship.
Luckily when it’s done by the government, that’s actually unconstitutional and you have a recourse. When it’s done by a private company, you have none.
> It's a private company, they should be free to choose what kind of content they want to provide
Censorship is just a classification of what they are doing. In both cases, it is selectively application of blocking of contents based on one's political believes. Calling them censorship is not an assessment whether they have a legal/illegal/legit/reasonable/unreasonable cause to carry out such acts.
>Government censorship is happening if you want it or not. The main difference is now that there is a lot more collateral damage with SSL deployed.
Good. Make the censorship visible. Make it all or nothing. Force people to move to technologies that cannot be censored (or that at least are more resistant).
The alternative is to let the government censor everything they want and let people see only what the government approves of, with the latter just being easier to deploy and switch to the former if it ever crosses the line.
> Do people believe in a free and open Internet, or do they not?
Not really. They want a special kind of freedom where censorship is not allowed... unless the stuff that's getting censored is the kind of stuff that they don't like. Lots of people would enthusiastically support their moral standards being written into law.
> As proof, consider that we are having this conversation right now, about an article that was published and is freely, legally available online to anyone with a web browser.
As long as you control what a large segment of the population sees, you can orchestrate peoples actions. Censorship has never been absolute or complete and doesn't need to be in order to be effective.
> There are only a handful of countries that restrict internet access
I agree with the thrust of your general argument, but feel it necessary to point out that the list of countries with substantial and automatic filtering mechanisms is much larger than that. Eg, I've experienced censorship in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India.
Legal means can still involve brute force; for example, when a court somewhere decides that a certain type of content is abhorrent and should be put on an automatic DNS blacklist that ISPs are required to use.
I know that, I am clearly saying I don't want it for any consumer-led efforts.
> That's not censorship
Did you mean to say it's not government censorship or do we just have different definitions of the word? Whether they can host their own site or whatever has absolutely nothing to do with what is and isn't censorship.
That was the result of an ISP's own blocking system.
And there is no government censorship, please stop saying that - customers are given the option to opt-out of content filters -- it's not mandatory. This has always been the case, the only difference now is that ISPs must ask subscribers.
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