Guido refers to Richard Baron's article Internet censorship on his blog Analysis and Synthesis. The post includes a well-argued letter that he has written in response to Nominet's request for feedback.
Of course we all want sites that run scams, show child porn, or facilitate terrorism to be taken down. The question at issue is whether this is simply a decision to be made by the police or whether some kind of due process (such as obtaining a court order) should be observed in order to ensure that such censorship is not inflicted arbitrarily. I agree with Richard Baron that sites should not be closed down simply because they express "extreme" views.
The danger for Catholic blogs is that "equality" legislation is increasingly opposed to the free expression of Catholic doctrine. Pope Benedict reflected on this in some of the less controversial parts of his recent interview "Light of the World" and in his excellent book "Truth and Tolerance". If law enforcement agencies are allowed to decide motu proprio that a site must be closed down, we have then moved another step nearer to a police state.
Guido has some good advice in his post about spreading one's internet footprint around in various legal jurisdictions.
5 comments:
Hi, Father Finigan:
I usually read your blog for news of liturgy and chant, and other sources for matters connected with jihad -- but today, I need to say for the record that we don't "all want sites that … facilitate terrorism to be taken down".
As Dr. Peter Neumann, Co-Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation noted recently:
at ICSR, we have studied the problem of online radicalization for nearly two years now. Policy makers need to understand that there is no easy technical solution - closing down websites or removing controversial, yet legal, content is crude, expensive and counterproductive. In addition, senior intelligence officials around the world have told us that it's better to monitor these websites than censor them. They are goldmines for counter-terrorist intelligence.
There's a more detailed account of why this is a bad idea here.
And now, let's get back to Solesmes...
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I assume if you use Blogger you *are* hosted outside the UK.
The dark lord, Peter Mandelson started it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/apr/08/digital-economy-bill-passes-third-reading
One can see the US Government obtaining Court Orders to seize Internet domains here:
"In what appears to be the latest phase of a far-reaching federal crackdown on online piracy of music and movies, the Web addresses of a number of sites that facilitate illegal file-sharing were seized this week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/technology/27torrent.html?_r=1&ref=global
There are worries expressed in that article about a Bill going through the US Congress which, if enacted, would be called:
S. 3804:
Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act
No sign that they or the UK authorities will close down websites that promote Pornography, Violence or Usury or Heresy however.
Censorship is already under way in USA; see www.naturalnews.com for links to news that the Fed has closed down 75 websites for supposed copywrite infringement, with more likely to follow.
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