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Re: [Asrg] 4a. Taxonomy. Censorship vs. filtering

2003-12-13 10:03:01
"Jon Kyme" <jrk(_at_)merseymail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Can someone remind me why "censorship" must be a Bad Thing. As long as it's
explicit and appropriately authorised, I don't see any sensible objection.

  Which leads back to consent.  Consensual censorship systems are
reasonable.  The problem is that most censorship systems are
non-consensual, and people confuse the issues of consent and
censorship.

  Corporations censor their incoming and outgoing mail, for reasons of
legality, privacy, security, and trade secrets.  This isn't viewed as
bad.

  But ISP's censoring network traffic is seen as inappropriate,
because of the idea that Internet access is "free and unfettered".
The problem I have is that that idea was never a reality, and many
people can't move beyond the idea, to acknowledge that it's only an
idea, and that reality is different.

Of course the word "censorship" carries a lot of emotional weight for some
people - I'm not sure it can be defined in narrowly technicals terms as
above - even approximately - It's a social thang.

  Any party other than the data originator or recipient which blocks
traffic based on *data* content is censoring the traffic.  The
backbone routers don't censor traffic, but they may choose to block
attacks on themselves.

  Alan DeKok.


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