Porn and Political ControlThe other day, I saw that the government of China was complaining about Microsoft's "bing" service and Google doing a bad job of blocking pornography in searches.
"Hmmmm..., what about Marx/Lenin/Confucius is anti-porn?" I asked one of my friends. Neither of us had any good ideas; at least followers of the abrahamic religions can fall back on the notion that the supreme all-powerful being that created us doesn't like to see us running around naked (for his own mysterious reasons). But, really, if you're ideologically Marxist/Leninist, pornography may simply be a new opiate for the masses; it serves government's agenda more than not.
But then the other shoe dropped; really, what's going on is that they're using pornography as the stalking goat for enhancing the tools of political control. If you can block porn, you can block links to "how to bypass content filters" and "here's photos of how state power responds to pro-democracy protestors, using tanks and guns." Sure - use porn-blocking to justify tightening your control of information.
One reason this strategy works is because the US (where Google and Yahoo! and Microsoft are) has its own horrible indecision about censorship. Thanks to a run of religious fanatics in our government, we have a Department of Justice that spends a significant amount of effort trying to prevent free speech in spite of the fact that, every time they try, The Supreme Court shoots them down. "The will of the people" doesn't even enter into it - but this kind of nonsense puts US companies in a position where they're already used to being told what is 'acceptable' or not by a government, and the legal structures are already in place to force compliance.
Censorship has always been one of the primary tools of the religious autocracy and dictatorship. Stifling free expression is necessary, especially when you are lying - and know you are lying - to your own people. Whenever you hear about dissent being suppressed, or a crack-down on anti-government speech, you can bet that - if it's on the Internet - the tools being used are the ones that were put in place for "porn" filtering. Think about that, next time someone tells you "it's for your own good."
mjr.
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Devious Comments
I laugh when I hear people complain about it mostly because it's the same people who support firearms.
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restrict information, create & maintain fear levels, and provide simple physical pleasures and you can control the masses.
sad but true.
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Neither Angel of Heaven nor Demon of Hell, I wander the fine grey line between.
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the futuristic looper with the quickness
The Internet should stand how it is, it's upto the parents to monitor and use filtering software for their children not the job of the people creating content.
Parts of the German government are currently working on pushing through an entire Internet censorship infrastructure plan under the convenient umbrella of fighting child pornography and child abuse, whereas studies show that web censorship is barely helping anything against this child abuse.
As usual, governments rely on the sheer stupidity of the general population, even though there are far more smart people than they think. Either that, or they are well aware of that but simply don't care because governments always do whatever the fuck they want because the absolute majority of the people let them, or even help them.
Sometimes when I read the latest Orwellian news from China or the UK, the U.S.A can happen to strike me as a somewhat free country, but in reality they're setting up the nightmare just a little slower and more covert than their British and Chinese comrades.
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Why should content creators be at the mercy of bad parenting practices due to the ignorence of installing something like net nanny software. They get no sympathy just a polite tutorial on installing "net nanny"
If they had it as an option you could turn off at the isp level then that would be acceptable as long as grown up people can turn it off.
Shouldn't be a job of the government at all.
It was long enough that we were able to perform a trace.
Please stay where you are and a representative will arrive at your location presently to collect you for interrogation and waterboarding. You will recognize him by his black jackboots and heavy combat armor.
Thank you for your cooperation. Remember, IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!
The Naughtiness Police
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
--Clarke's Third Law
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