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ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

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Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#71

Post by baconhigh »

aphextron wrote: post #3

The government of New Zealand’s entire response to the shooting incident, as well as the public’s cheering for it, is the most disturbing Orwellian thing I’ve ever seen. The level of authoritarian curbing of freedoms that has seemingly happened overnight at the stroke of a pen should seriously concern anyone who values constitutionally limited government. I’m all for the debate, but as an American it’s unimaginable t…

All the political parties of NZ government agreed on the ban of semi-automatic military style weapons, which should have been illegal long ago.

What 'curbing of freedom' do you see happening, exactly?

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#72

Post by huntie »

nutjob2 wrote: post #47
doesnt_know wrote: post #12

Not everyone holds the same absolute views on freedom of speech as those drawn up in the American constitution. There is also plenty of opposing views of a "constitutionally limited government" that seems to be at the heart of American culture. Frankly, it's pretty disturbing how many Americans are unable to comprehend that their way isn't the "only way" that can be valid. The New Zealand Bill of Rights provides free…

It should be noted that the first amendment doesn't apply to companies, ie you have no rights with respect to them. For example Facebook is doing the exact same thing.

Companies may not be legally culpable for freedom of speech, but they are still morally culpable. Rights are not a legal construct, but a moral imperative. The founders of the United States recognized the importance of these rights and created a tiered system of laws in order to ensure these rights would be maintained by the government. Sadly we have no such guarantee from companies.

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#73

Post by DuskStar »

baconhigh wrote: post #69

All the sites in the article were hosting illegal (in NZ) content - they were temporarily blocked till the video (of a terrorist killing innocent people) was taken down. Nobody needs to see that. It's not about free speech. The sites in question are used to spread hate, racism, violence and bigotry. Why are we tolerating this kind of media in our lives? Why are we letting people upload this? It is not free speech. It…

Hate speech is free speech that you happen to not like.

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#74

Post by marcus_holmes »

oska wrote: post #31
doesnt_know wrote: post #12

Not everyone holds the same absolute views on freedom of speech as those drawn up in the American constitution. There is also plenty of opposing views of a "constitutionally limited government" that seems to be at the heart of American culture. Frankly, it's pretty disturbing how many Americans are unable to comprehend that their way isn't the "only way" that can be valid. The New Zealand Bill of Rights provides free…

Why do you think supporters of Free Speech look to the American constitution? This seems like a strawman to me. Support for Free Speech has a very long and broad history, a great deal of which predates the founding of the USA and a great deal of which has been outside the USA. People across the world and throughout history don't like being silenced.

Not all peoples. Some cultures are "collective" (as opposed to the West's "individualistic") and value social harmony more than individual rights. In these cultures, speaking your mind when it causes any kind of disagreement or conflict is not encouraged and can lead to social penalties. This is not "the authorities" censoring free speech; this is family, friends and neighbours trying to maintain a harmonious community.

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#75

Post by huntie »

amanzi wrote: post #63
huntie wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's censorship was wrong, and those countries and ISPs censorship would have been wrong as well. Free speech is a human right and censorship is immoral.

Twitter (and Facebook and any other online site) has Terms of Use policies that all customers must abide by if you want to use their platform. If you don't follow their rules, they can remove your content or your account. That is their right since it's their platform and you agreed to their rules when you signed up. If you don't like their policies you have the freedom to not use their platforms.

This has nothing to do with what I said. When I said it was wrong, I meant in a moral sense. Freedom of speech is a human right, which is ensured in the United States by the first ammendment of the constitution. Twitter is morally culpable for its censorship.

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#76

Post by [deleted] »

huntie wrote: post #19
doesnt_know wrote: post #12

Not everyone holds the same absolute views on freedom of speech as those drawn up in the American constitution. There is also plenty of opposing views of a "constitutionally limited government" that seems to be at the heart of American culture. Frankly, it's pretty disturbing how many Americans are unable to comprehend that their way isn't the "only way" that can be valid. The New Zealand Bill of Rights provides free…

Americans are unable to comprehend it in the same way that the civilised world cannot comprehend enslaving another. Just as enslaving others is wrong, limiting free speech is wrong, and inherently contradictory. Limited speech is not free. It is time for the rest of the world to understand this, and the US could use a refresher as well.

[deleted]

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#77

Post by mnm1 »

doldge wrote: post #53
Jason_Genova wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the meat of what I thought interesting was the initial email. I thought it was concerning that the NZ police were looking to get IP/email addresses of people merely conversing about the attacker. The rest of the thread is just funny because the police respond in the best way possible to the site operator's freakout.

in what world is that concerning? They've been trying to discern if there was a cell of people around who harbour the same intent as this man, or if he was acting alone. New Zealand, a sovereign nation, has every right to request that information. The email was simply a case of whether the maintainer of the site would respond reasonably to a request from the NZ judicial system, or whether they would need to subpeona…

> If that maintainer of that site is serving content to New Zealand, that it seems reasonable that he should be beholden to NZ laws.

So should be also be beholden to Chinese, Saudi Arabian, Russian, North Korean, and other governments' laws for simply having a website? That's beyond absurd and by that line of reasoning, most website operators should be jailed in some country or other. This is one of the most absurd arguments I've ever read. Luckily, it has no legal basis. Hopefully it never will.

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#78

Post by thaumasiotes »

spondyl wrote: post #61

While not an official statement, this forum post from a Spark employee is worth a read: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=184&topicid=24... --- I am NOT officially empowered to talk about this but I want to shut down any conjecture right now. No actions of Spark taken now or over the next 24 hours or so should be considered representative of policy. They may turn out to be temporary, they may even with hi…

> No actions of Spark taken now or over the next 24 hours or so should be considered representative of policy.

That's not how it works. When you claim to have a policy, and don't bother to even pretend that it governs your actions, your actions will be taken to represent your policy, because what people care about is your actual policy, not a document you happen to call your "policy".

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#79

Post by marcus_holmes »

huntie wrote: post #32
doesnt_know wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty disturbing you compare disallowing hate speech to enslaving someone. Also pretty ironic considering > the incarceration rate of the United States of America was the highest in the world, at 716 per 100,000 of the national population. While the United States represents about 4.4 percent of the world's population, it houses around 22 percent of the world's prisoners

First, I agree that the US has an incarceration problem. We're certainly not perfect, and I think much of the problem is due to the US's drug problem. Regardless, comparing incarceration to slavery is disingenuous as slavery requires no wrongdoing whereas incarceration should require wrongdoing. As for my comparison of disallowing hate speech to slavery, it is a very valid comparison. The two are morally reprehensibl…

what about "collective" cultures that don't prize individualism? If you are discouraged from saying something because it will cause social disharmony within your community, is that as morally wrong as slavery?

I think not.

I think capturing someone from their home, their country, their loved ones, transporting them across an ocean, beating them, making them work for the rest of their lives without pay, while starving them, raping them, and imprisoning them, is a long, long, long way more morally wrong than not letting idiots spout whatever crappy opinion happens to wander across what passes for their mind, regardless of what damage it causes.

Re: ISPs in AU and NZ start censoring the internet without legal precedent

#80

Post by thaumasiotes »

dangerbird2 wrote: post #35
huntie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are unable to comprehend it in the same way that the civilised world cannot comprehend enslaving another. Just as enslaving others is wrong, limiting free speech is wrong, and inherently contradictory. Limited speech is not free. It is time for the rest of the world to understand this, and the US could use a refresher as well.

> limiting free speech is wrong Enabling the spread of terrorist propaganda, like the blocked websites have been doing by hosting the Christchurch shooting video. You'd better believe if websites like Twitter and Youtube didn't self-censor ISIS propaganda like they did in 2014, many countries would be having their ISPs block those sites.

> if websites like Twitter and Youtube didn't self-censor ISIS propaganda like they did in 2014

People posted ISIS beheading videos to YouTube and caused a policy crisis (within YouTube). YouTube responded by deciding that the beheading videos should stay up because they were newsworthy. As shocking as one of those videos is, it notionally shows why ISIS is bad.

Or at least, that's what they said. YouTube simultaneously took down murder videos from South American gangs, on the theory that the gangs uploaded those videos themselves and whatever they wanted, YouTube wanted the opposite.

I can't reconcile the two policies. The video shows what it shows. ISIS is, presumably, proud to have its propaganda videos displayed to the world, even if the uploader's accompanying commentary is "how horrible".

And by the same token, when a gang uploads one of their own propaganda videos, that video illustrates how horrible the gang is in exactly the same way that ISIS's videos illustrate how horrible ISIS is. They are equally newsworthy. But policy was that uploads of ISIS propaganda videos for the purpose of criticizing ISIS were good, and uploads of gang propaganda videos for the purpose of scaring the local citizenry were bad. The fact that ISIS's local populace might be scared or attracted by propaganda videos, or that people outside of South America might be repulsed by publicly-available gang murder videos, apparently doesn't enter into it -- it's all about whether the uploader is pure of heart.

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