Status of the world's censorware
Here's a page listing status of the invisible systems used by governments and ISPs around the world to "block child pornography." The lists of "child porn" are generally secretly compiled and held, and the blocks often simply return a timeout or 404 error, so it's virtually impossible to determine whether a given page is being filtered by the system. The potential for abuse is incredible, since pages that get added to the list effectively disappear and there's practically no way to appeal the censors' decision (what's more, if you do appeal and lose, you're branded a pedophile).
"Child porn" lists have historically included literature from Nabokov's "Lolita" to Alan Moore's brilliant "Lost Girls". These lists also often pick up material made by gay/lesbian/bi teenagers: journal entries and videos and audio describing their experiences with authority and mainstream society. These kids are even more poorly equipped than Nabokov fans to advocate for their right to communicate with their peers over the Internet. Link (Thanks, SethF!)
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I don't mind so much seperate ISPs choosing to block certain websites, after all, their company, their choice.
However, rights of free speech start to be infringed as soon a government forces all ISPs to block access to certain websites.
The problem with allowing certain ISPs to block certain websites is that it gets them in the position of control to block or impede whatever they want. Sure, there aren't too many steps between simple network management and excising a host from that ISPs accessible 'internet', so I would be more comfortable with the solution of not encouraging them to take those few steps.
I am going to reject the idea that the market will decide if it wants 'filtered' network access because the consumers are oblivious in large enough number to allow the market to choose the most profitable path without regard to extra-market concerns like open access and content-ignorant common carrier operation.
Gosh, it almost sounds like I'm advocating for some form of regulation...
The problem with having illegal sequences of numbers that you aren't allowed to access is that there is no legal way to generate a list of them, nor is there any legal way to review such a list, because in order to do either of these things you would have to access the data.
It should therefore come as no surprise that all such lists are grossly inaccurate and incomplete - there's no motivation to improve them, since they can't be reviewed, and no real way to improve them anyway.
They have to keep the lists secret to stop people from noticing that their method is either ineffective or illegal.
Additionally, any investigation into this would have to be prevented for political reasons, since it would reveal a fundamental logical flaw in their proposals: their claim is that looking at this data will "turn people into paedophiles", so clearly this must also apply to the people who compile the list (if they actually look at the data at all, rather than simply making up a list of sites they don't like).
It is strange that you profess to be anti-censorship, while censoring non-abusive user comments ie those with an opinion different to that of your moderators on Boing Boing's comment threads.
here we go again
I can't stop giggling.
Sparkzilla, are you familiar with the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof?
Claiming that one ethnic population in the former Yugoslavia is made up of innocent lamb-like victims, and that the other ethnic population they're currently most irritated with has always been their criminal oppressor (which is somehow connected to their population growth rates, i.e. they breed like rodents) is in the nature of an extraordinary claim.
Supporting such a claim requires better sources than the head of the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State, and a chart on Wikipedia. Besides, what Wikipedia tends to support is the higher Albanian birth rate. It doesn't support the interpretations you place upon it.
Where did you get the idea that "non-abusive" is the only measure of a comment?
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Just so you know: this thread is not going to turn into a discussion of Kosovo.