Norway To Censor the Web
And I do mean China-style. A government commettee has reccommended that Norwegian ISPs be required by law to filter out all sites that goes against Norwegian law.
That means that all hardcore porn (all porn that shows moving genitatalia is forbidden by Norwegian law), all online gambling, all sites that invite pirating, all sites that contain racist material — in effect, all sites that call upon hatred towards the government could be banned (and I do wonder how that could be misused...)
Actually, Norway already has a filtering on the web, filtering out paedophilic content. This filter is not required by law, however — and even though most ISPs choose to use the filtering.
The Merits of Free Speech
The argument used by the supporters for this censorship is that one should not tolerate more online, than what we do in real life. That the internet should not be some sort of free haven.
They also point to the fact that the web originally was created as a strictly controlled tool for universities, as if that somehow implies that it should stay strictly controlled forever.
Well, you know what? It doesn't. I believe the web should be a safe haven. Yes, I am all for banning paedophilia, racism and bomb-making — but filtering the web is not the solution. First off, it would mean having to censor whole servers, which would inevitably lead to the censorship of legal sites (think shared hosting, for instance, where bangamidget.com may very well be located on the same server as mypetrat.com).
And what would be done about Google? Would Google have to cater a censored version for Norway, like they did to China? For if not, Google search results could in them selves be illegal. And what about blogging sites such as Blogger/Blogspot? Surely there has to be illegal content on some of those blogs, and therefore, the whole system would have to be taken down.
I think the cold weather is starting to deteriorate the brains of our dear government commettees. I'd buy them some hot Starbucks to reactivate their brains — but let’s not forget that we’re in the country so far away it doesn’t even have Starbucks.
If we were talking about a pure Norwegian network I see the point, but first of all the Internet is international. That’s part of the concept. And second, Norwegian sites are already controlled by Norwegian law. And finally third, censorship would only be a huge waste of money and never actually work in a western democracy. My bet is that the guy who came up with this still unplugs his broadband cable before he goes to bed in fear of someone infiltrating his computer and taking over his brain and stealing his wife. The people in this committee are ready for retirement (or the psych ward) and this suggestion proves it!
You mean hackers can’t come into my house and steal things through the DSL-cable!?
And all this time, I’ve been using dialup to prevent that!
Wait, first they’re mad at Apple’s DRM and now this?
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