Censorship in democratic countries

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In the US, it's illegal to merely discuss technology which can bypass copy protection systems.

In the UK, almost 100% of ISPs have a filtering system which is controlled solely by one organisation which has, in the past, blocked access to Wikipedia. The system used for this is silent and secretive - if you go to a blocked site, it will look like a connection error, and sites can be added at any time without going through court.

Additionally, there are three movies which are banned in the UK, and four currently banned in the US.

While there are many campaigns against the censorship carried out by China and other such countries, most of us seem blind to the censorship which happens right under our noses.

I personally am a big believer of freedom of speech, and I find it really stupid that "free countries" actively censor media.

What's your opinion on this? Better say it quick before doing so becomes a crime.

Some censorship should always be needed.

Like for example the sex tape which recently caused the suicide of a guy in Boston, as well as other information intended to demean individuals.

And then of course, kiddie porn and snuff films, as well as films where people are torturing animals. Such abhorrent things should not only be removed from the internet, but the perpetrators hunted down and put before court.

thats hitting just the tip of the iceberg, censorship is a single aspect of propaganda in the US media.

for a society to be democratic the public must receive unbiased information on all topics to come to a consensus then the ruling powers make a descision based on that consensus, to stay in power they must make their descisions appeal to that consensus. This is why Freedom of Speech is USA's first amendment. Although, if you had all the resources nesssary to feed the public only information that would lead to one logical concusion, a conclusion that would benefit yourself, not showing them information that would allow for other conclusions this would make the public come to a consensus that the goernemnt would then have to act upon, giving that person great power in a democratic system. This is essentially how the american propaganda system operates, of course only in a extremely rudementary way. If you wish to learn more I highly reccomend reading Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, there is also a less in depth movie docu of it aswell, same name as the book.

I'm a bit of a first-amendment extremist. Censorship is always bad.

Install Ubuntu, enable universe, multiverse, and medibuntu repositories, and type 'sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2' into a terminal. You can now break the copy-protection on every DVD in the world.


Source? And list of these movies?


Largely because China is much worse about such things, but there is still plenty of cause to be concerned when the difference between us and them is only of degree, not of kind.

Oh noes! You discussed it!

I also have libdvdcss2 installed on my machine, which is not legal in my country. Even though I don't rip DVDs (libdvdcss2 is necessary to even play DVDs under Linux) it is still a violation of the DMCA.

And who is obliged to provide unbiased information assuming that unbiased information is even possible? All information has an implicit world view at it source. The only real possibility it to know what the bias is up front and correct for it.

The press and media are not legally obliged to be free of bias. What they must do is avoid libel and slander torts. Bias is legal. Libel and Slander are actionable.

ruveyn

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ba ... ed_Kingdom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ba ... ted_States

Compared to the total number of motion pictures produce these lists are a modest sprinkling.

And in some cases the bans were temporary.

ruveyn

I know, but one should ask whether democratic countries should censor anything, and I think the answer is no.

Some bans were temporary, yes, but when I talked about how many films were banned, I only counted the ones still active today.

The only kind of censorship I see as making sense is showing porn to children. Other than that, let information, and by extension freedom, reign.

But even then, how do you realistically stop children from accessing porn without censoring it completely? It's literally impossible.

Having looked at that list though it appears that those in the last 40 years (in America) are not examples of censorship, but rather examples of enforcement of property laws and intellectual rights.

Likewise, even the very first example was a restriction on public viewing rather than making it a crime to possess. In the cases where they were banned for moral reasons, they were not nation wide. Thus, this is not national(ie government) censorship.

As for the UK ones.. It seems you guys DO have a national board that can ban such things. In any case only two films stand banned today and one of them hasnt been out long. It seems likely that one of those two will be eventually approved, giving the past actions of the committee.

Exaggerate much?

What does democracy have to do with anything.

We have democratically elected a government that has appointed a body to to decide what can and cannot be shown.

It it was such a big we could vote for a party that pledged to do away with censorship.

Some people voted for the Pirate party. I guess that not enough people trusted them to run the economy though.

Somewhat reminds me of the lists of allegedly "banned books" that I come across sometimes... more often than not, what they mean by "banned" is "at some point it was assigned reading for high school kids and at least one parent bitched about it." My high school English teacher even tried to convince us that one of our books (I think it was Madame Bovary) had previously been banned in America.

More often, historically America tended to ignore intellectual rights and allow Americans to publish foreign books without getting permission or forcing royalties. I believe war of the worlds is one example.