Monday 20 October 2008

Censorship is just wrong

I spent most of my time thinking about transition at the moment with brief interruptions for shopping for clothes and such and the odd technical excursion. There are some things, however, that *really* get to me and censorship is one of them.

Just read an article on The Register about the possibility of the UK Regulating the Internet. As noted in the article itself the idea of providing any sort of filtering or content rating is technical insanity, there is just so much information as to make any implementation unworkable. Of course this would not stop the government trying - practical considerations never seem to stand in the way of policy making.

My approach is simple, if possibly a little naive: No censorship at all; no information should be restricted or considered un-publishable. Under no circumstances should anyone be able to make a decision on what information I or anyone else can access.

The problem I see with censorship of the internet, aside from the practical issues, is that someone must decide what is acceptable and what is not. Anyone would be subjective in their decision and any organisation would come have to contend with opinions from the multitude of charities, religions, pressure-groups, political parties, or even just a collection of disgruntled citizens.

I see no way that any level of organised censorship or regulation can be fair, there will always be subjective bias and that can be very dangerous - it should be avoided otherwise we are on a very slippery slope.

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