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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

#151

Post by doldge »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #113
doldge wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

actions have consequences; whether those actions take place online or not. If what he did was hate speech, then it makes sense to charge him with it. That he did it online, or didn't realise that saying vile things would have undesirable consequences shouldn't excuse the behaviour. (N.B I think he should be charged with something, but I don't think prison time is a fair response to his actions).

Hate speech, is protected speech in my mind, no matter how abhorrent. The founding fathers of the USA had a reason for the 1st amendment. You milage may vary in your location, but at the end of the day, censorship of speech is very very slipper slope. This type of speech needs to be countered by education and by people standing up and saying "we will not listen", not a bureaucrat. Allowing the government to censor wh…

that's a very American stance to take. I don't mean that as an insult; I mean that Americans value individual liberty above all else.

That isn't the case in NZ; Most of the population trusts the government and value's collective good above individual liberty, the policies and responses to events like these are born out of our culture and focus on those values. It's apples & oranges with the US culture of valuing individual liberty.

I do feel that to say that it's solely personal responsibility is to disregard easily mislead demographics (specifically the youth). Of course the plan is to educate them so that they can reason these situations out for themselves, but until then it's societies duty to look out for them, and to ensure they're not being exposed to unnecessarily harmful views.

Personally, I believe some people can't actually be reasoned with all that well; You can try, but eventually you exhaust yourself without ever changing there mind; What's the saying about "the world changes when old men die"?

As a final counter-point. My understanding is that Osama Bin Laden never personally attacked the US. It was his hate speech that incited violence, it was his ideology that was his weapon. The response to that was to condemn a man who was not US citizen to death without ever having a trial. I'm not saying he shouldn't have been killed; I'm asking why one incitement of violence, of hate speech; is acceptable and should be allowed when another is not? (keeping in mind that both are in relation to a terrorist attack).

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

#152

Post by KidComputer »

throwaway8879 wrote: post #142
KidComputer wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People lost their lives terribly, that much can be understood without watching it. What more do you really gain by watching the video? Do you have some morbid curiosity that you need to satisfy? Do you think we should disregard the feelings of the survivors or those who lost someone close? How do you think they feel about the video being shared? How would you? Do you think they deserve respect and solidarity? If so,…

If someone wants to watch it, regardless of the intent, they should be allowed to. Disrespect should not be illegal. That's silly.

That's not even an argument. So people should be allowed to watch child porn?

Plenty of parallels between the two. People are hurt in the filming of both. It's damaging to the survivors. It feeds into the fetishes of those who would watch such a thing (it's a snuff film). In the case of this film I could argue that potential perpetrators could study the film for their own plans.

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

#153

Post by bufferoverflow »

hestefisk wrote: post #144
erentz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Woah hold the hyperbole. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. What actions specifically are you even referring to? The change in gun laws? Australia banned semi-automatic…

Free speech doesn’t mean the right to insult or spread unlawful things online. Whilst I do find it concerning that the ISPs are self-censoring, blocking access to a video of an act that contradicts all of our democratic rights (freedom of movement, freedom of religion, freedom of thought) can hardly offend anyone. Free speech is the right to express an opinion without being penalised. Left wing and right wing lunatic…

> Free speech doesn’t mean the right to insult

Actually it does. Even hate speech is free speech in the US.

> or spread unlawful things online

That's not a free speech violation then. The video in question is not classified, doesn't break any laws, it just depicts a horrible act. Should we make all war documentaries illegal too?

> Free speech is the right to express an opinion without being penalised

So you just contradicted your first point. If I, for example, say "you're an idiot", it's an opinion, it's protected speech (in the US at least).

AU doesn't have free speech except political speech, and has been making some Orwellian moves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#A...

NZ has the Bill of Rights of 1990 that states:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form."

So it seems that any censorship would directly contradict that.

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

#154

Post by jpollock »

New Zealand has operated a country-wide content filter for years. It is primarily used to filter out "content depicting the sexual abuse or exploitation of children and young persons" [1]. Filtering of objectionable content is entirely within the social norms of New Zealand.

For comparison, since the video and manifesto have been labelled "objectionable" [2] it would be illegal to burn either to a disk and then carry the disk across the border. The argument the government will make is that this is applying the same rules to content imported into the country via the Internet instead.

If the population expects the social networks to take this content down, they will expect ISPs to remove access to social networks which do _not_ take the content down.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_New_Zea... [2] https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/news/latest-news/ch...

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

#155

Post by RandomInteger4 »

retsibsi wrote: post #125
RandomInteger4 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you're being disingenuous, ignorant, or lazy, but here. Simple Twitter Search for "white people are evil" https://twitter.com/search?q=white%20people%20are%20evil&src... EDIT: Ironically, many of those proclaiming such things are either the uber-woke SJW white people, or the black supremecist types.

Edit: any explanation for the downvote? Maybe the list was overkill, but I was responding to someone who accused another of being 'disingenuous, ignorant, or lazy', then presented very weak evidence for a claim that was supposed to be so obvious that questioning it justified those insults. (Basically no evidence at all, since it had nothing to do with New Zealand, the country which this discussion was specifically ab…

The point wasn't to say that the percentage of X posts to Y posts was Z%. The point was to say that these posts and sentiments exist and here is a way to find some almost guaranteed with one simple search; i.e. it's not hard to find this sentiment around the internet.

If you've lived at any point in a social circle that involved wholeness you will see this sentiment displayed and defended. The whole idea of racism in critical theory is a defense of racism against white people by saying that it's not actually racism, which is a dog whistle, as they put it, to those outside of academia, giving them the go ahead to express such racist sentiments in the colloquial sense.

I'm saying all of this as a liberal who is against hatred and bigotry of any form, and as someone who at one point used to echo such white woke SJW sentiments without realizing that I was trying to find acceptance among my woke friends. I know what these circles are like; you almost certainly are being dishonest if you travel in these circles and say you haven't heard these sentiments.

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

#156

Post by DuskStar »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #147
DuskStar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Except this is hate speech. Or are you saying it isn’t

I dislike it, so it's hate speech, of course!

But I tend to believe that I should not have the power to determine what can or cannot be said, and that no one else should have that power either.

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

#157

Post by leesalminen »

oska wrote: post #93
marcus_holmes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? because Australia and NZ have large immigrant populations (in fact, are large immigrant populations) that contain many races. Racial disharmony causes huge problems, and creates the real possibility of violence, mayhem and bloodshed. As reasonable societies, these things are seen as bad and to be avoided. Consequently, actions that will create racial disharmony are illegal. You can hate on whoever you like, but…

> but you can't grab a megaphone, head down to the mall, and encourage other people to hate the same people that you do Your example is a misdirection. What you describe is being a public nuisance in a public area, not free speech. I don't want to be subjected to nasty, racist rhetoric in a public space, just as I don't want to be harangued to repent of my sins and "Let Jesus into my life" in the same place. But I su…

> In both cases audiences are seeking to be exposed to these views

If people only hear what they want to hear then issues will never be resolved. It’s necessary to hear things sometimes, even if it’s personally revolting or bothersome. Everyone has to deal with annoying people in life and laws won’t fix it.

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

#158

Post by aspett »

int_19h wrote: post #118
StavrosK wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did they do? I'm only aware of the gun bans, which strikes me as reasonable. The TSA, for example, with the random luggage and body searches strikes me as an order of magnitude more Orwellian.

The bans will, for the most part, be useless, as most gun bans based on features usually are. To see why, look up e.g. "MARS action rifle", or "lever release AR-15". At the same time, countries that don't bother with stuff like that, but instead regulate who can own firearms much more stringently than US does - e.g. Czech Republic - are doing fine.

> At the same time, countries that don't bother with stuff like that, but instead regulate who can own firearms much more stringently than US does - e.g. Czech Republic - are doing fine.

I think you'd have said the same thing about New Zealand a week and a half ago, yet here we are.

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

#159

Post by roca »

tootahe45 wrote: post #124
jjcm wrote: post #109

The problem with censoring and banning the information outright (in the case of NZ) is that it gives power to the manifesto. So much of what Jacinda Ardern said after the shooting was about denying the person a platform: "We, in New Zealand, will give him nothing. Not even his name." "He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety, and that is why you will never hear me mention his name." And yet…

I think one of the core reasons they don't want people to read it is that in the aftermath they're doing everything he wanted and more.

Some of the things his manifesto says he wanted, like stricter gun control, are indeed happening. Others, like a cycle of revenge attacks, are not, at least not yet.

Of course it would be unwise to believe that he told the truth about his aims in his manifesto. Even if we could figure out what he really wanted, figuring that out and then doing the opposite would not be a rational way to respond to an incident like this.

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

#160

Post by Rebelgecko »

sebthedev wrote: post #21
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…

Which aspects of the New Zealand government's response do you object to? Off the top of my head, the government has: used the existing regulatory system to temporarily halt sales of the sort weapons used in the terrorist attack; introduced legislation into parliament to permanently halt sales of the sort of weapons used in the attack, which will proceed through the regular legislative process; announced plans to inve…

Perhaps nitpicky, but I believe the potential ban and existing re-categorization of certain types of weapons would only ban 2/5 of the firearms he used.
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