
Ministers bid to block extremist videos posted on foreign websites - sp8
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26124541
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SixSigma
Very disturbing turn of events

> Last October, Prime Minister David Cameron condemned Facebook's decision to
> allow videos showing people being decapitated back on its pages. > He said
> it was "irresponsible" of the social network.

Watching videos of LiveLeak of people being executed by all the sides in
Syria, Iraq, Chechnya, Lybia, Afghanistan has taught me more about those
conflicts than the BBC, CNN etc. The narco Cartels releasing videos of their
hideous torture and murder has totally changed my mind about the cocaine
trade.

The truth is liberating. Cameron is unwittingly turning himself into the King
Canute of myth, trying to prove that he can turn off the tide of truth. Canute
was trying to demonstrate the powerlessness of kings. Cameron thinks he has
power. He will get wet feet just the same.

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DerpDerpDerp
Remember when they said filtering would just be for porn?

And then just for pirates and porn?

Now coming to you based on being an extremist in the eyes of government!

~~~
DanBC
This is a different filter-attempt than the porn filter. As the article says
that can be turned off. This is more in line with the piracy filters, but
implemented by government not the courts after private cases.

The big brother spokesperson suggests that if content is to be blocked it
should be after a court order. I'd prefer for most of it not to be blocked.

> Last October, Prime Minister David Cameron condemned Facebook's decision to
> allow videos showing people being decapitated back on its pages.

That was a weird decision, especially when they had earlier been deleting
images of breast feeding women.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
My point was more general than about a specific blocking methodology: that
people who were defending specific blocks all pointed out how they would be
targeted, but the social acceptance of one seems to encourage people to try
for more.

~~~
DanBC
But there have always been calls to block those three things.

Sinn Fein members used to have their voices dubbed in news broadcasts because
of UK law and that was in the 1980s.

Material useful for terrorism has been illegal for some time. This article
talks about not just keeping those videos illegal but blocking them from
entering the country. That's not a new thing. The UK has been preventing
plenty of material from entering the country if they can.

The UK has censored some forms of pornography for many years, and people
importing magazines would have had them removed.

This "slippery slope" argument fails not because there isn't a slippery slope,
but because we're so far down it already and have been for years.

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kalleboo
> The BBC has also been told it has proved difficult for the government to act
> against sites hosted abroad, both in the Middle East and in the US, where
> freedom of speech is protected by the constitution.

As a European, I'm a bit jealous of US free speech protections.

~~~
dobbsbob
That's why most authors have moved there like Rushdie and Hitchens claimed to
have moved to the US because of the stifling UK slander laws where any
politician could accuse a critic of slander and the onus was on the critic to
prove they haven't slandered instead of the other way around.

Still, not like politicians in the US haven't tried to dismantle free speech
protections under the phony excuse of "hate speech" remember the Obama
administration pressuring youtube to censor that "innocence of muslims" video?

Meanwhile in my pathetic country, silly anti-bullying reactionary legislation
has led to all sorts of censorship on written "bullying" prose, and of course
politicians were the first to use the laws against each other and their
critics.

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betawolf33
Oh yes, we must protect people from being exposed to certain ideas. Else they
might be convinced those ideas are true. This is for everyone's protection.

~~~
sp332
Don't be silly, everyone has already decided that these ideas are wrong.
They're not very interesting and you don't need to see them.

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godfrzero
Have these guys considered that maybe instead of filtering the world to make
it seem a better place, just work on making it a better place?

~~~
d0
That's more expensive and they need to other bits to be shitty to help the
war-driven economy.

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Aoyagi
I see UK is becoming the new China when it comes to internet freedoms.

