OT 05/14/04 Is censorship a good thing?

Joseph Goebels certainly thought so; to an extreme. honest I'm not trying to stir the pot here! Recent events around here aside, although it did bring to mind yesterday, I started to ponder how much censorship plays a part in our lives and how much of it do we really catch on to? If you can believe what you read at www.theinquire.net or the www.register.co.uk it appears many corporations, AHEM HP! bless me I sneezed :) , incorporate it into company policy. How much of a good thing is good for the goose and not the gander?

Ok, I'll immolate myself first...

I've actually spent a great deal of time thinking about this very subject...

Although as I age, the general morals and ethics (or lack thereof) of the media and society as a whole are beginning to disgust me personally, I still maintain that censorship is an evil thing which should be avoided; if for no other reason, because I don't believe that there is any such thing as a little censorship.

I would rather be exposed to things I find repugnant, and make my own choices, than to turn the decision over to anyone else.

Too many examples in history of censorship leading to even greater dangers, and no example that I can recall where it ending with good results...

Censorship covers a broad spectrum which can involve both personal and public sector security it is not one specific area that you can paint with a broad statement of justification or disagreement as it can involve anything from a single persons personal details all the way to a state secret.

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American Library Association Definition of Censorship

Censorship -- The change in the access status of material, made by a
governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include:
exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes.

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Censorship is the use of state or group power to control freedom of expression. Censorship 'criminalizes' certain actions or the communication of such actions - or suggested communications of such actions. In a modern sense censorship consists of any attempt to suppress information, points of view, or method of expression such as art, or profanity. The purpose of censorship is to maintain the status quo, to control the development of a society, or to stifle dissent among a subject people. For this reason, censorship is very common among organized religions (especially cults, most notably Jehovah's Witnesses), clubs, social groups and governments. However there are also numerous groups which oppose censorship.
Censorship can be explicit, as in laws passed to prevent information being published or propagated (as in Australia or China where certain Internet pages are not permitted entry), or it can take the form of intimidation by government or even by popular censure, where people are afraid to express or support certain opinions for fear of losing their lives, or their jobs, position in society, or in academia, their academic credibility. In this latter, form it is sometimes called McCarthyism.

Censorship is a typical feature of dictatorships and other authoritarian political systems. Democratic nations usually have far less institutionalized censorship, and instead tout the importance of freedom of speech.

Some thinkers understand censorship to include other attempts to suppress points of view or ideas such as propaganda, media manipulation, spin, or disinformation. These methods, collectively, tend to work by disseminating misleading information, preventing other ideas from obtaining a receptive audience.

Others point out the suppression of access to the means of dissemination of ideas by governmental bodies such as the FCC in the United States of America, or by a newspaper that refuses to run commentary the publisher disagrees with, or a lecture hall that refuses to rent itself out to a particular speaker. Thinkers such as philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand consider this latter form of censorship to be an acceptable outcome of the defense of property rights. Contradictions of her position emerge from her disapproval of state backed monopoly license in the arena of radio and telecommunication broadcast and state funding of the arts.

Data havens and decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing systems such as Freenet can be used to prevent censorship.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Censorship

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Censor: One who supervises conduct and morals: as a) an official who examines materials (as publications or films) for objectionable matter; b) an official (as in time of war) who reads communications (as letters) and deletes material considered harmful to the interests of his organization. Censorship: The institution, system or practice of censoring; the actions or practices of censors; esp : censorial control exercised repressively.
--Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary


Censorship: official restriction of any expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order.
--Encyclopedia.Com

Censorship is a word of many meanings. In its broadest sense it refers to suppression of information, ideas, or artistic expression by anyone, whether government officials, church authorities, private pressure groups, or speakers, writers, and artists themselves. It may take place at any point in time, whether before an utterance occurs, prior to its widespread circulation, or by punishment of communicators after dissemination of their messages, so as to deter others from like expression. In its narrower, more legalistic sense, censorship means only the prevention by official government action of the circulation of messages already produced. Thus writers who "censor" themselves before putting words on paper, for fear of failing to sell their work, are not engaging in censorship in this narrower sense, nor are those who boycott sponsors of disliked television shows.
--Academic American Encyclopedia

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock...finitions.html

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You yourself are a censor in that you use such things as a firewall and spam blocker etc to filter your PCs capability to access certain data.

The answer is "sometimes."

Should an army/company/individual stop broadcast of its battle/business/financial plans?

Most people would say "yes" in spite of Pearl Harbor/Enron/tax cheats.

There are situations where secrecy is clearly in the public interest. Martha Stewart's insider trading based on confidential information she should not have been told, is a recent example.

In general, I think too little censorship is better than too much, but I don't know of any generic definition of too much. How do you create laws that keep a reasonable balance between privacy and confidentiality?

A free press is probably the best defense against unreasonable censorship.

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Originally posted by jerryctx
In general, I think too little censorship is better than too much, but I don't know of any generic definition of too much.
A free press is probably the best defense against unreasonable censorship.

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I would be hard pressed to provide you with a generic definition of either too little or too much. But as far as too much I can provide you with plenty of examples of too much from world history and not have to go back further than eighty years. Heck I can even point out a couple from current events.

The notion of a Free Press is, in my opion, is a dying breed if there really one that still exists. I mean really in Canada there are essentially two corporations that have managed to monopolize our printed press and three that have control of the more widely used electronic media. In the US there is what 4 or 5 conglomerates that control their 'free press'?

Is a Contract or and Agreement censorship? For you are saying I
am willing to work with in the frames of it.

I don't care what you do you will have to work in the frames of it.
If you have a boss at work you have to do what he/she tells you
do with in the frames of your job.

We can not do our own thing and when someone tell us it is
wrong say: this is censorship. There are laws/regulations and
agreements that we make that we have to work with in those
frames.

I think some people mistake their own stubbornness for
censorship and they are wrong.

That's the way I see it.
My 2 cents worth
Take Care:)
http://pages.prodigy.net/indianahawkeye/signs02/14.gif

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Originally posted by jerryctx
In general, I think too little censorship is better than too much, but I don't know of any generic definition of too much. How do you create laws that keep a reasonable balance between privacy and confidentiality?

A free press is probably the best defense against unreasonable censorship.

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Agreed

Hi ,this subject is probably as old as the human race. Remember Voltaire, you know the one who roughly translated said " I may not agree with what you say yet I will defend with my life your right to say it." Me I am in this camp. Sorry about the length but from the man more on the subject:-

As you have it in your power, sir, to do some service to letters, I implore you not to clip the wings of our writers so closely, nor to turn into barn-door fowls those who, allowed a start, might become eagles; reasonable liberty permits the mind to soar--slavery makes it creep.

Had there been a literary censorship in Rome, we should have had to-day neither Horace, Juvenal, nor the philosophical works of Cicero. If Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Locke had not been free, England would have had neither poets nor philosophers; there is something positively Turkish in proscribing printing; and hampering it is proscription. Be content with severely repressing diffamatory libels, for they are crimes: but so long as those infamous calottes are boldly published, and so many other unworthy and despicable productions, at least allow Bayle to circulate in France, and do not put him, who has been so great an honour to his country, among its contraband.

You say that the magistrates who regulate the literary custom-house complain that there are too many books. That is just the same thing as if the provost of merchants complained there were too many provisions in Paris. People buy what they choose. A great library is like the City of Paris, in which there are about eight hundred thousand persons: you do not live with the whole crowd: you choose a certain society, and change it. So with books: you choose a few friends out of the many. There will be seven or eight thousand controversial books, and fifteen or sixteen thousand novels, which you will not read: a heap of pamphlets, which you will throw into the fire after you have read them. The man of taste will read only what is good; but the statesman will permit both bad and good.

Men's thoughts have become an important article of commerce. The Dutch publishers make a million [francs] a year, because Frenchmen have brains. A feeble novel is, I know, among books what a fool, always striving after wit, is in the world. We laugh at him and tolerate him. Such a novel brings the means of life to the author who wrote it, the publisher who sells it, to the moulder, the printer, the paper-maker, the binder, the carrier--and finally to the bad wine-shop where they all take their money. Further, the book amuses for an hour or two a few women who like novelty in literature as in everything. Thus, despicable though it may be, it will have produced two important things--profit and pleasure.

The theatre also deserves attention. I do not consider it a counter attraction to dissipation: that is a notion only worthy of an ignorant curé. There is quite time enough, before and after the performance, for the few minutes given to those passing pleasures which are so soon followed by satiety. Besides, people do not go to the theatre every day, and among our vast population there are not more than four thousand who are in the habit of going constantly.

I look on tragedy and comedy as lessons in virtue, good sense, and good behaviour. Corneille--the old Roman of the French--has founded a school of Spartan virtue: Molière, a school of ordinary everyday life. These great national geniuses attract foreigners from all parts of Europe, who come to study among us, and thus contribute to the wealth of Paris. Our poor are fed by the productions of such works, which bring under our rule the very nations who hate us. In face, he who condemns the theatre is an enemy to his country. A magistrate who, because he has succeeded in buying some judicial post, thinks that it is beneath his dignity to see Cinna, shows much pomposity and very little taste.

There are still Goths and Vandals even among our cultivated people: the only Frenchmen I consider worthy of the name are those who love and encourage the arts. It is true that the taste for them is languishing: we are sybarites, weary of our mistresses' favours. We enjoy the fruits of the labours of the great men who have worked for our pleasure and that of the ages to come, just as we receive the fruits of nature as if they were our due [...] nothing will rouse us from this indifference to great things which always goes side by side with our vivid interest in small.

Every year we take more pains over snuffboxes and nicknacks than the English took to make themselves masters of the seas [...]. The old Romans raised those marvels of architecure--their amphitheatres--for beasts to fight in: and for a whole century we have not built a single passable place for the representation of the masterpieces of the human mind. A hundredth part of the money spent on cards would be enough to build theatres finer than Pompey's: but what man in Paris has the public welfare at heart? We play, sup, talk scandal, write bad verses, and sleep, like fools, to recommence on the morrow the same round of careless frivolity.

You, sir, who have at least some small opportunity of giving good advice, try and rouse us from this stupid lethargy, and, if you can, do something for literature, which has done so much for France.

any bit of censorship is too much...it always proves for a one sided, two faced government no matter which side you choose anyhow. Noone wins on either side unless you're on the governing side which ultimately decides anyhow.

And I live in the US

censorship is B.S.
policing is the same as well as
ages for drinking
smoking
legalazation, etc, etc ,etc.....

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Originally posted by jerryctx
Should an army/company/individual stop broadcast of its battle/business/financial plans?

Most people would say "yes" in spite of Pearl Harbor/Enron/tax cheats.

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To me, that sort of thing isn't censorship; it's merely the creator/owner of the material choosing to keep it secret.

I think it becomes censorship when some other entity (typically government) decides that you can't publish your material or express your ideas. That's almost invariably a bad idea.

The only case of acceptable censorship which springs to mind is defamation, and in that case I think we've got it pretty much right here in SA -- a statement can't be considered defamation if it's true. That protection doesn't exist in some other states, and that would worry me.

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To me, that sort of thing isn't censorship; it's merely the creator/owner of the material choosing to keep it secret.

I think it becomes censorship when some other entity (typically government) decides that you can't publish your material or express your ideas. That's almost invariably a bad idea.

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Tuttle, I don't want to argue the definition of censorship. Mine is obviously broader than yours but I agree with your concern.

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The only case of acceptable censorship which springs to mind is defamation

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How about censorship to save lives? That's the big issue in the US after 9/11 (although most of the "homeland defense" laws are a waste of effort, but that's a different issue).

jerryctx since you brought up this Homeland Security aspect I thought I would share this. In Canada we haven't bothered to create a whole new level or goevrnmental department instead the have chosen to more prevalently use the term 'National Security' with added Liberal (sorry please excuse the pun) empowerment. One such case has been in the courts for what is now approaching fifteen months. The poor slob has been in jail all this time and his waiting to stand trial for the crime of ????????? no one really knows what it is except that it supposedly is related to terrorist activity. That's government sanctioned censoring for you.

This guy has gone through two lawyers already and is hoping to hire a new one sometime soon. The first lawyer resigned from the case due to receiving death threats according to government sources the death threats are unrelated to this case but the barrister in question wouldn't say and has since gone into hiding and hasn't been heard of or seen since.

The second barrister protested that he hasn't been allowed to see any of the 'evidence' related to the charge(s) his client has been accused of. The Crown replied to that to reveal such evidence would jeapodize National Security. The judge sitting on the case granted the defence access to the evidence. What the defence received were thousands of pages that had all the words blacked out except is, and, the, of, it, its..... well you get the point. The judge sitting on the case after some consideration announced that the Crown has provided the defence with all pertinent information and that he has been assured what has been censored out would be put National Security at risk! The second lawyer has since resigned saying the court costs are too high and he can't afford to continue on with case. A widely accepted translation would be "This case is one dog of a loser the client has run out of cash so there is nothing in it for me."

National Security what a joke! We just welcomed a family of freaking self admitted Al-Quaida terrorists into Canada so their son (injured in a fire fight with US\Pakistan military) could be treated in a Canadian based world class hospital.

How about *SPAMMERS* should we not censor them?

How about *TEL-MARKETERS* should we not censor them?

How about *CHILD PRON.* should we not censor it?

I think a lot has to do with your mind set and what part of the world you live in.

We have to draw the line somewhere! CENSORSHIP is not bad
it is what we are censoring where the problem lies.

Take Care:) https://discussions.virtualdr.com/

If it keeps people alive I be fore it.
Lost to many friends because of the lack of it in combat. From the military aspect.

Besides, the news media normally censors things in such a manner so that it sells more. The all mighty $$$$ is what they want.

No,,I am 'not' a religious fanatic! And,I realize there are many different religions throughout the world.
But a close look at The Ten Commandments give a very basic,but realistic thought as to how thinking,reasoning human beings can get along peacefully and live together without conflict on this ol' ball-o-mud we call 'Earth'.

Conflict begins with someone saying 'no you can't' or 'it's none of your business'. Or my favorite thanks to 'big brother': 'It's on a need-to-know basis and YOU don't need to know'!!

What is the one thing that will pull us 'reasoning' beings apart?? Simple GREED! . Once this creature inserts itself into the human mind, it's almost impossible to get rid of. The G*d almighty buck in any form or denomination is one of,if not the biggest,cause of censorship in the world today!! In-My-Humble-Opinion :rolleyes:

Censorship is almost always politically motivated. I, personally, don't want someone else deciding what is or isn't good for me. I'll make my own misstakes thank you.

Perhaps it's just my suspicious nature but when I find omissions that have been edited out because a document has been censored I suspect I'm not getting the whole truth. Case in point? How about the Warren Commsion transcripts?

Ha, the ten commandments! :rolleyes: Thou shall not kill unless its a non christian is more like it! Just look at the crusades, kinda threw out the whole ten commandments. Also, as Calpitor just mentioned:

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Perhaps it's just my suspicious nature but when I find omissions that have been edited out because a document has been censored I suspect I'm not getting the whole truth.

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Look at the Tonkin resolution. A fully loaded navy boat was patrolling in designated NVA waters with spy equipment to intercept enemy communication, blatantly breaking the rules. A Vietnamese craft approaches, the US boat shoots wildly, and boom, we are able to draft more people, and apply more weapons just short of nuclear weapons. When the evemt was portrayed as a major attack on the US. Too many others to mention.

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Originally posted by jerryctx
How about censorship to save lives? That's the big issue in the US after 9/11 (although most of the "homeland defense" laws are a waste of effort, but that's a different issue).

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I can see how that's an issue when using your definition of censorship, but I don't see how it's a problem when using mine. That sort of national security info tends to be owned by government agencies (who are choosing to keep it secret), or contractors to those agencies (who voluntarily agree to the secrecy as a condition of doing the work).

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Originally posted by DELTREE
How about *SPAMMERS* should we not censor them?

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No. They can advertise away, they just can't do it using my systems. If they want to call me and discuss rates, I'm happy to chat. :)

That does raise another thing which didn't occur to me before -- false and misleading advertising. But just like the defamation restrictions I don't have a problem with, that deals with stuff which is false and misleading and aimed at hurting people.

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How about *TEL-MARKETERS* should we not censor them?

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Same as spammers -- no problem with the advertising, just with their hijacking of my property to do it. For suitable consideration, I'll take their calls 24/7. :) Alternatively, they're welcome to stand just outside my front gate and read off their spiel; I won't complain.

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How about *CHILD PRON.* should we not censor it?

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The actual, thing, no doubt -- every act involved in producing it is illegal, and for good reason. Beyond that it becomes less clear cut. Arbitrary example: Ken Park -- adults depicted as 16/17 year olds. The US says yes, Australia banned it outright. I think the US got it right, even though I wouldn't see the film if it was available here.

Hey, Whats the difference between art and pronography? A government grant! :)

Calpitor,Warren Commission Report: you can get a 26 Volume report if you want to put out the $.
Take Care:D
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Warren Commission.....good call.....even if you can buy the document that does not mean its going to have the information that the government covered up.....

Censorship forms part of the essential fabric of the capitalist society. Where would the modern businessman be if he didn’t have the ability to censor a critic, even when that critic was speaking the truth, if what was being said went contrary to his business interests.

Governments play a part in this by formulating laws, which permit courts to impose injunctions which server to silence these critics, under penalty of imprisonment for ‘Contempt of Court’ should the injunction be ignored.

The really astute businessman does not censor his critics, as this could show him in a bad light, rather he uses lackeys to do this, thus insulating himself from criticism, and having a scapegoat should public opinion be voiced against his enterprise.

Whether we support censorship or not, it is alive and well, here. :rolleyes: BF

Let me give you the Dictionary meaning of:Censor and of Cover-UP
CENSOR, A person authorized to examine literature, plays,or other material and who may remove or suppress what he considers morally or otherwise objectionable.

COVER-UP, An effort or strategy designed to conceal something, such as a crime or scandal.

The Warren Commission was a COVER-UP in my mind, but was it
censorship; NO.

That's the way I see it.
Take Care :) http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/...s/edeagle2.gif

Do we need censorship? Sure. Is it the publics right to know everything? I don't think so. In the cases of national security, censorship is a must. Perhaps US citizens don't feel the need because your country is not at risk of extinction. But if a spy in another country were to be uncovered, would you want that info made public? Or if there were aliens:D and they did land in farmer bobs back yard :D don't you think that would cause panic? In these cases, censorship must be upheld. There are many cases when censorship should not be used. A good free open press is important, until you get to a situation where someone can get hurt by your enemies.

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Originally posted by DELTREE
The Warren Commission was a COVER-UP in my mind, but was it censorship; NO.

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I'm not trying to create an argument with you but the original Warran Commission's transcripts were highly censored. Perhaps you're not old enough to remember what the documents looked like after their release. There were entire passages that were blotted out. If they had been simply cut out lace would have had more substance. The Warren Commission's finding were called a cover up due to degree they censored the transcripts plus other things such as the trajectory of the "magic bullet" and eye witness testimoney that didn't entirely agree with the Commission's findings plus... plus....