‘Please censor the Internet to protect my childrens from Evil’?

  

   (Gluyas Williams “The Censor”)

AN OPINION.

  There are  people, convinced that they know, on the ground of their own morality and beliefs, what is nefaste for me when I visit sex, porno, violence sado-maso sites on the Internet. And if so, why should I not benefit from their gratuitous intervention by passing for me a censorship bill , to hold me and my ‘little childrens’ on the right track of their ‘obvious’ superior morality.

  Actually (Feb 28, 2008), this is what is now happening in Israel: ” Knesset okays Internet censorship bill”. I quote,..”The Internet porn bill - authored by MK Amnon Cohen (Shas, the ultra-orthodox Sephardi and Mizrahi Judaism political party), strongly supported by Communications Minister Ariel Attias (Shas) and spiritually endorsed by party mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef - ..[requiring] Internet users to specifically request full access to pornography. Those requesting such access would have to prove they were adults.”…see here

  What I like in their bill, is the ‘Good for the Children’ argument. I quote ..”about 47 percent of Israeli children have a computer in their room and can surf privately, while in most cases parents are unaware they may be exposed to harmful websites.”… “an enlightened country should also safeguard the rights of its children as well as the important value of “protecting minors.” see here.

  And I ask myself: ” I and you, as the father of children or as future fathers, don’t we want to protect our children from ’sex…etc”?  Or perhaps are we so dumb that we need the supervising of the omnipotent spiritual  Fathers of Shas, the ultra-orthodox Sephardi and Mizrahi Judaism political party” or of any regulative bigotry machinery.

  Now, this is not only an Israeli issue. In many countries, like the Smoke Ban, there is the Porno Ban under the central auspice of the authorities. In principle I don’t object the need of regulation, surely not if done by the parents.

  But look how slippery it may be if done by the state.   Here are excerpts from the article:…”Finland censors anti-censorship site”. ..”Finnish police are blocking more than 1,000 legal websites, including one belonging to a well-known Internet activist, under a secretive system designed to prevent access to foreign sites that contain child pornography..”….”..What’s more, the censorship system threatens sites that offer all kinds of content, including political forums blogs and message boards. That’s because it requires Finnish Internet service providers (ISPs) to block entire web servers, so a single user posting a single inappropriate link has the ability to get an entire service shut out. As a result, plenty of legitimate sites based in the US, Europe and elsewhere, are blocked solely because they share space with a bad actor.”…see the full article

  Anyway, is it possible to hold an effective censorship on the whole Internet?

  Look at this article: “Censorship on the web isn’t rewarding, yet”.   Here are some excerpts …”The Californian court ruling to cut off Wikileaks.org from the Internet has shocked the blogosphere. “…” Wikileaks is a rather controversial websites that gives whistle-blowers an anonymous stage for their revealed secrets.”.. ” Turns out… they’ve posted.. several hundred documents about the offshore activities of a Swiss bank. The bank has send in an army of lawyers who managed to convince the court to order that Dynadot, the company that hosts the domain name, should remove all traces of Wikileaks.org from its servers.”…”Good news for the dissidents and journalists: the site is still accessible via 88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks. It’s hosted in Sweden…. Duncan Riley from TechCrunch correctly stated that “unfortunately for Bank Julius Baer, the legal action will probably result in more people reading the documents in question”….See here for the full article.

  Now, a possible answer to “effective censorship on the whole Internet” is here, I quote …”Canadian software tool blows away Net censorship, wins global award”…” Psiphon - designed by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab - is the first recipient of a new award for digital pioneers chosen by an international group of specialists and awarded in Paris this month,  2/25/2008″..”  Psiphon evades such censorship through an encrypted connection between the user’s computer (in the country with Internet censorship) and another piece of software – essentially a Web proxy – on a volunteer’s computer in a country where Internet access is not controlled.”..the full interesting article is here.

  So is there a solution? Sincerely I don’t know. But Dr Hetsroni, a senior communication lecturer at the Jezreel Valley College (Israel), wrote, I quote ..”So where do pornographic websites lead to? The common answer, which many adolescents are familiar with, is sexual arousal and self-induced sexual relief. Indeed, masturbation constitutes spilling sperm in vain according to Judaism, yet it is doubtful whether even in a religious state there would be laws that limit a person’s right to masturbate in front of the computer at his own home.”.. see here.

  I suppose that adolescents  and others will find their ways to the Canadian Psiphon or any other software to beat any state censorship in the vein of the following motto by John Gilmore “”The Internet treats censorship as though it were a malfunction and routes around it.”

  BTW, if you want an additional view on what people think about internet porn censorship look here at “Porn filter may slow internet” and the 145 comments, published by the Australian ‘HeralSun’.

.