
Censorship flamewar - johns
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/01/censorship-flamewar.html
======
grellas
No individual or private party can "force" anything off the internet unless
that person has the force of law behind its otherwise private action.

The communist system of law is undergirded by a philosophy that assumes
humankind can be reshaped and reorganized to achieve a collective goal for
society that ultimately is ushered in by force. That is why freedom is lacking
in such societies. One can be completely cynical about this and point to the
way such societies have historically degenerated into slave camps but there is
actually a form of "idealism" at work here, to wit, a view of humanity that
says we can be molded from scratch to conform to a model of state government
that enforces state ownership, state education, and state dictates as the
central components of life, presumably to the betterment of society.
Inexorably linked with this philosophy of the state is the idea that those who
are being molded and shaped toward the ultimate goal will be exposed to and
accept the ideas that animate this system and will not deviate from those
ideas. A collective effort requires a collective will and there is little room
for diversity of ideas when everything in society is shaped and directed by a
centralized authority toward a common goal. Hence, it is natural and logical
for a communist government such as that found in China to suppress all ideas
that conflict with the idealized view of humanity that this government is
currently forcing down the throats of its citizens. Law is law, and it is
backed by fines/imprisonment/executions, etc. that enable a central
governmental authority to use force to realize its will. If that centralized
will is aimed at the strictest control over the most minute lives of its
citizens - as it typically is in a communist system - there is no room for
freedom of expression or for any beliefs or ideas that deviate from the narrow
range of ideas that are deemed acceptable by those controlling the instruments
of force in such a society.

In contrast, the western system of government, which generally is based on the
ideas of capitalism and freedom, tends to be animated by a philosophy that
sees citizens as being free to follow their diverse pursuits, goals, and
dreams. This system is not anarchistic - government plays a crucial role here.
But it is a role where the force of law is used to set up an infrastructure of
private property and private rights where human freedom can flourish (in the
ideal case, it being the case that no such system has yet been implemented
without even flagrant flaws in it). Law, and the force it involves, is
essential to such a system. If I have an exclusive right to own and occupy my
home, this means that I have the right to exclude you from it - and, if you
try to trespass, or to break and enter with the intent to steal, I can invoke
the force of law to sue you in a private legal action that ultimately is
backed by a sheriff ready, willing, and able to enforce collection of money
judgments and also by police officers who will arrest you, courts that will
try you, and jailers who will incarcerate you for your transgression. Force,
or the threat of force, is behind any such system and, without this, the
system could not work. Yet that force is limited by the philosophy that
underlies our system - to wit, that the best government is not one that can
use unlimited force without restraint on its actions but rather one that is
checked, balanced, and restricted by things such constitutions that set the
ultimate rules and that bind and limit all governing authorities. Without this
philosophy, these constitutions would be the mere pieces of paper that they
amount to in communist systems. With them, the shared values of society are
realized, the governmental systems are checked while still enforcing an
infrastructure that supports freedom, and we realize the fruits of enjoying a
comparatively free flow of ideas, beliefs, and other information, along with
all the other freedoms that we take for granted.

The Disney example is one of the force of law being used to enforce private
property rights - in this case, the exclusive rights Disney may have to its
intellectual properties. Though IP is intangible, and constitutes what might
often be called information, it is nonetheless a form of private property that
is under the exclusive ownership and control of whoever owns it. And, as with
other forms of private property, the law stands behind it ready to apply force
to protect the rights society may value in such forms of private property.
Though enforcement of such rights is by force of law, and though (at this
level) our system has a shared trait with a communist system that also uses
the force of law to enforce its dictates, this system of private property has
nothing fundamental in common with that of a communist system - indeed, it is
the very antithesis of such a system. The one promotes and protects the
individual and private parties as ends in themselves by using an organized
system of government designed precisely for that purpose. The other (ideally)
promotes and protects the interests of individuals and private parties by
using an organized system of government whose goal is to enforce mass
conformity to the declared purpose of the state to reshape humanity based on a
collective means of ownership.

Of course, one can take issue with whether IP constitutes a legitimate form of
private property that should be backed by the force of law. The various
aspects of that debate can and should be argued by the citizens of a free
society. But it is not legitimate to suggest that IP takes on a bad odor
simply because it shares a superficial and incidental element (that the force
of law ultimately restricts an otherwise unrestricted free flow of
information) with a communist system of government. A government can censor
and suppress ideas in ways that stop all free debate and that ultimately can
transform a free society into a tyrannical one. That is what China does. A
government does not "censor" ideas and information by declaring that a private
individual or entity has an exclusive right to exploit the IP it has created,
even though this has the incidental effect of limiting who can use that IP as
long as it remains owned by that party.

Thus, the two cases could not be more different, and the word "censor" hardly
makes them identical or even similar in any material respect.

~~~
pvg
_The communist system of law is undergirded by a philosophy that assumes
humankind can be reshaped and reorganized to achieve a collective goal for
society that ultimately is ushered in by force. That is why freedom is lacking
in such societies._

I think this is a bit too broad, you can easily argue that just about any
society includes collective goals in its purpose and that the use of force and
coercion are the ultimate methods of enforcement in any system of laws.

The difference tends to be in how fairly and universally the laws are applied,
rather than some fundamental quality of the legal systems themselves. If you
look at the constitutions of most Communist countries, you'll find they
proudly guarantee freedoms the great majority of their citizens never actually
had.

------
three14
Several comments argue that democracy makes all the difference. Why?

 _Theoretically_ , the copyright law can be changed to limit it to 20 years.
In practice, it can't, despite the fact that more or less _everyone_ who
understands the issue and isn't either a lawyer or Disney employee agrees that
it should be limited.

In some respects, the U.S. is a real democracy. On this particular issue,
voters have no say, because they can't vote directly on the issue.

I support copyright, just not the version that Disney bought.

~~~
ambition
The majority of voters don't think that copyright reform is big enough issue
to change a vote over.

A minority of voters (you and I included) think copyright should be changed.
But we're not big enough to make the change happen. You might think this is a
bug worth fixing. "can't vote directly" implies that you think more direct
democracy would solve the problem, but I claim the cure would be worse than
the disease. There are major unsolved problems with allowing small highly
interested groups to influence policy too much, since the system can't tell
whether they're (we're) right or not.

By contrast, _even if_ censorship were a major issue on the minds of non-free
citizens, they would be powerless to change it. Furthermore, censorship is an
auto-immune disease: It harms the system's ability to fix itself and permits
many more severe problems. Broken copyright isn't the same. (Corporate
sponsorship of politicians, however, is an auto-immune disease too, and broken
copyright is a symptom.)

~~~
est
The voting system selects someone best for an election game, but not quite for
presidency.

~~~
jbooth
Congress writes the laws about copyright. All of the laws about everything, in
fact.

------
axiom
The difference between the first example and the second is the difference
between the defensive use of force and the initiation of force.

Disney has a monopoly on the use of Mickey Mouse because they created it and
because the spent billions building the brand. That brand is their property,
just like a house or a car might be.

The Chinese government arbitrarily declares ownership of other people's minds,
and insists they have the right to determine what kinds of thoughts they
should be allowed to have.

It's the difference between me shooting a burglar who breaks into my house,
versus me walking into someone elses house and shooting them. Yeah both
involve violence, but it's not hard to see why one is wrong, while the other
is at least understandable.

~~~
bOR_
I think the Chinese government only arbitrarily declares that as they own the
internet connections in their country, they can decide what information is
allowed to flow through them, and they decide such which is in their best
interest.

That's still a tad short from declaring ownership of other people's minds.

Sidetracking: Say you are Bose, and use commercials and tech-speak extensively
to convince people that your speakers sound heavenly. Is that trying to
control people's minds? Brand building, especially when it is more than just
making people aware of your product, is a form of mind control.

~~~
axiom
Yeah but what gives the Chinese government the right to control the internet
connections in the country?

Even if it happens to be the case that all of the infrastructure was built
with government funds - those funds were taxed away from citizens.

But that's a moot point - the Chinese government is not shy about declaring
that they are trying to be a moral police. Their intent is pretty explicitly
to control what information people are allowed to see.

Now, suppose a private company like AOL decided to filter their customers'
internet connections - is that censorship? Absolutely not. Because you can
switch to a different provider. If you're a Chinese citizen you can't switch
governments (or avoid being arrested for disallowed speech.) Only the
government has a monopoly on the use of force.

~~~
henrikschroder
The Chinese people give the Chinese government that right, and apparently a
lot of them give it willingly since they are willing to trade freedom for
stability.

~~~
mike_organon
Some Chinese people apparently give the government that right, but not all.
People are individuals, not a single unit. And since they are not free to
speak, you can't really tell how many want to give up freedom.

------
ryanwaggoner
This essay is a weird conflation of two issues: copyright and government
censorship. Yes, I suppose they're both "enemies" of the free flow of
information, but I think it's an unfair comparison.

There's nothing special about the Internet from the perspective of copyright.
I don't really understand why so many people have such a problem with the
concept of copyright, but it seems especially acute with regard to the web
crowd. I suspect it's because the ease with which copyright can be violated
online makes people feel that it can hardly be doing any damage, so what's the
big deal. The ironic thing is that people on HN cry bloody murder when someone
rips off a webpage design or posts blogspam instead of linking to the original
source. Please explain how this is different?

~~~
emmett
It's not a conflation at all. You really should have a reason why Disney
movies should be censored from the internet, but Chinese dissident materials
should not be. Clearly there could be such a reason, but there is a parallel.

Obviously there's nothing special about the internet from the perspective of
copyright; but there's nothing special about the internet from the perspective
of Chinese government censorship either. So once again, the two are parallel.

If you want to distinguish between them, come up with a reason why they're not
parallel.

~~~
Nwallins
They are not parallel because most countries respect copyright. Enforcing
copyright is not censorship in those countries. Putting (unexpired)
copyrighted material on the public internet violates copyright. Ensuring that
this does not happen is not censorship as commonly understood.

Censorship by government presumably violates its citizens' right to free
speech. If this is not the case, then this is not censorship as commonly
understood.

~~~
emmett
To rephrase what I think you're saying:

China is wrong because they're in the minority; essentially they're outvoted.
If most countries didn't respect copyright but did censor, then that would be
right instead.

~~~
ErrantX
I think what he is trying to say (though it might be worded a little wrong) is
that by enforcing copyright a country is enforcing what is generally
considered an attempt to maintain a fair balance (note: no comment on whether
this is successful or not) on content distribution to stimulate positive net
gain.

Compared to a government enforcing what is generally considered censorship and
a negative net gain.

(if the vast percentage of the world agreed censorship of the type China
exhibits was right, then, well, yes it would be "right" - but that is much
more of a philosophical question)

~~~
Nwallins
What I am trying to say is ultimately in response to this:

> _You really should have a reason why Disney movies should be censored from
> the internet, but Chinese dissident materials should not be._

Disney movies should be "censored" from the internet because countries which
respect copyright ought to enforce such. Chinese dissident materials should
not be "censored" from the internet because Chinese dissidents presumably have
a right to free speech. This is the _Western_ perspective, as I understand it.

I am pointing out the difference between the two scenarios and not necessarily
endorsing the Western perspective.

------
mscantland
Elegant, and one seems to follow from the other. The only problem is that the
analogy is wrong.

Copyright seeks to improve customer choices by creating profit incentives.
Those who are willing to invest can create, and those who are willing to buy,
vote with their wallets. One hand washes the other, and copyright law simply
maintains the proper incentives for the system to work.

Censorship in China seeks to maintain a central focus of power by suppressing
alternative ideas or organizations, which when shown the light of day might be
more popular. There is an inherent conflict of interest which leads to
depriving citizens of the ability to control how they are governed.

So whereas copyright preserves profit incentives but leaves the market to
decide the winner, censorship in China puts one product on the table
(CPC/PLA), and prevents others from being considered.

~~~
jpwagner
I don't understand your point(s) at all.

    
    
      "...copyright law simply maintains the proper incentives for the system to work."  
    

What? The whole question is whether the system works, you can't just assert
that it does.

I cannot get any more out of your post than "I think copyright is good, and
China is bad."

~~~
mscantland
Disney made money from proprietary content last quarter (they paid $0.35/share
dividend), and censorship helped the Chinese Communist government remain in
power. So the system "works" in the sense that it performs as designed. I
don't think I asserted anything that isn't obvious, and that wasn't Bucheit's
point.

The question Bucheit raises is whether copyright protection is bad because
censorship is bad? Which isn't fair because the ends are always more important
than the means when human rights are at stake.

For example, if Bucheit wanted to show copyright protection in a different
light, perhaps he could have shown its virtue by comparing it to keeping
secrets about underground railroad stations?

But showing counter-examples is merely proving Godwin's law. Which I think is
what Bucheit's analogy showed to begin with.

------
algorias
Disney is preventing you from publishing something they own.

China is preventing you from publishing something you own.

There's really nothing more to it. This is just a silly attempt to attack
copyright by comparing it to something that is orders of magnitude worse. I
mean seriously, how can you compare the (allegedly) unfair protection of IP to
what basically amounts to human rights violations?

------
greyman
But wait - there isn't a "peace and stability" in China, and never was under
the Chinese Communist Party rule. There are under-reported violent unrests
happening
([http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/art...](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5627687.ece)),
there is a large network of forced labour camps (<http://www.laogai.org/>),
they are harvesting organs from live prisoners
(<http://organharvestinvestigation.net/>), etc. etc. All those things affect
large number of people and their families, and for those people it's
impossible to live in peace and harmony.

Living first half of my life in the communists-ruled country, I'd say it's not
possible to create harmony in a regime which suppress basic human rights. It's
hard to explain to someone who didn't live under such conditions. It's like
some kind of invisible pressure 24 hours a day, forcing you to comply with the
regime, preventing you to fully express yourself or living in a peace.

------
ambition
An attack from first principles:

Among the various kinds of power, _force_ is special, because force is the
only power that involves active harm. As political scientists see things, the
fundamental role of government is to maintain a monopoly on the use of force.

We distinguish liberal democracies from other governments based on how they
distribute the authority to use force. Liberal democracies are systems
designed to treat each citizen as equal. We treat factors that oppose this
equality as bugs[1]. We build subsystems that permit transfer of this
authority without the use of force.

Both democracies and other governments use force to maintain their monopoly on
force. (Though democracies tend not to need to use it as much.) The difference
is that democracies use this force with authority that was freely given to
them.

Copyright was created in the belief that it would increase the wealth of a
society. It is enforced with authority. If a majority of the population felt
strongly that it wasn't working properly, there is a mechanism for changing it
that does not involve the use of force. We treat factors that interfere with
this mechanism, such as corporate sponsorship of politicians, as bugs.

Censorship by government is a kind of force designed to preserve the monopoly
on force. Copyright is not an exercise of power, censorship is. The use of
power involved in enforcing copyright isn't designed to preserve the power
itself. (Disney doesn't run the police yet.) Finally, if the citizens of a
liberal democracy doesn't like censorship, they can elect a new government
that does away with it. Citizens under other forms of government have no such
recourse.

Moral relativism gets my heckles up.

[1]: Newspapers are our bug tracker, and an unsolved problem is to figure out
how to build a new bug tracker.

------
andylei
The difference is that Disney functions in a market environment, where the CCP
functions as a governing body.

In a market environment we give exclusive control of intellectual property to
certain parties because we want them to develop that intellectual property. If
we didn't give Disney exclusive control over Some Random Princess (TM), then
they will be less incentivized to develop the Next Random Princess, since
their expected profits from creating Next Random Princess is much lower when
anyone can make a movie about Next Random Princess. However, we like having
movies with interesting characters, and we would like companies like Disney
(as well as many other companies) to create interesting characters for our
enjoyment. So we increase the profit motive for them by giving them exclusive
control. We believe that the creation of new intellectual property outweighs
the value of having free access to existing intellectual property.

With a government body, incentivization doesn't really make any sense, since
there aren't competing governing organizations. Instead, we want our
governments to be as open as possible, because we can only have one
government, so we want to be able to criticize and influence the way it works.
Note that while revolutions may be a solution to this problem, they are often
bloody, and an open, flexible government is a far better solution.

------
coffeemug
I find that inhabitants of first world countries lack a certain degree of
perspective. There are laws to societal development, not unlike the laws of
physics. Some things must happen in a certain order; skipping steps results in
catastrophes. It's easy to argue unequivocally against censorship if you've
lived in the U.S. your entire life. If this is your stance, I challenge you to
visit India and see the massive scale of poverty, lack of basic infrastructure
and education first hand. I mean, it's _really_ not like here over there. You
have got to _see_ it to understand. It won't be so easy to trivialize these
issues after that.

~~~
diego_moita
I live in a 3rd World country also with massive poverty (Brazil) and I don't
know what you're talking about.

The only "law to societal development" that I know is that citizens should be
free to do whatever doesn't harm other people. And opinions don't count as
"harm".

I think China would be a much better place to live if their political
institutions where more like the ones in your country. India is an example for
China to follow.

------
notaddicted
Disagree.

Such discussion are pointless with a simplistic (undefined) notion of good.
When you define what "good" is, then you can have a real discussion about
ethics.

Once you define your value system (any inconsistencies? I hope not) then you
can compute (probably with immense difficulty) whether something is good or
bad within it.

If you are a consequentialist then you would evaluate the effects of
"censorship" in both cases. If you are not then you may also wish to evaluate
"censorship" itself, or the government's enforcement of copyright (calling
this censorship is rhetorical obfuscation, communication designed to confuse
the listener.)

------
pvg
If you define 'Censorship' more broadly than any standard definition
(dictionary, Wikipedia, common sense), you easily have a wonderful starting
point for a flame war.

Removing information from the internet is not, in itself, 'censorship', it's
removing information from the internet. Some narrower, specific versions of it
are, indeed, censorship.

Disney, incidentally, would be very happy to let you distribute their
intellectual property on the internet. As long as you can meet their price.
Try that with the Chinese government.

------
mnemonicsloth
Tell it to the Tank Man.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man>

This is a Godwin's Law-type situation. Economic growth and improving standards
of living are all very well, but at root China still maintains a brutal and
repressive apparatus for controlling its population.

Using that fact to make a point about copyright seems shallow, even if it is
an intellectually interesting argument.

------
absconditus
I think several of you are missing the point of Mr. Buchheit's writing. If we
remove some information from the Internet because of reasons A and B, why
isn't it valid for another entity to remove information for reasons A, B and
even reason C which is potentially more important?

~~~
lmkg
There is a very vital distinction: Disney removes all other copies, but allows
access to the original. China removes all copies. Disney restricts how you can
access the information, but China restricts what you can access.

Granted, the distinction isn't completely binary, as you can restrict access
to modes that are difficult. But I still think that the distinction is
productive. Disney's restriction does still fundamentally allow access to the
material, while China does not.

~~~
zmimon
> Disney removes all other copies, but allows access to the original.

But they don't have to - they could banish Mickey from the world if they chose
to. Copyright allows them to do it. Is that wrong?

I think it's more about who created the information - copyright is about
controlling things you yourself create. Censorship is about controlling access
to things other people created.

~~~
naa42
Be the way, can the company be the creator? The work of art is created by
people. So why the current Disney's directors or shareholders do control the
creation of the company's founder who has passed decades ago?

------
byrneseyeview
Disney has a reason to protect their copyrights. China has a reason to censor
their Internet use. Can't you _see the obvious parallels_?

This is not even Godwin.

~~~
garret
Not everyone realizes copyright enforcement is a form of censorship.

------
est
> but governing China is difficult, and without the ability to censor the
> internet, they too might fail.

Chinese history is full of fail like this, either the state is over secure, it
lost it ability to prosper and be creative, or it's partial secure and
ultimately transforming the whole state to a slave factory beneficial for a
minority power group, or it was so secure internally but after a hit by the
external (nomads) the whole state fail. Or it's not secure at all, it was hit
by nomads and fail.

The western world did wrong on many levels during this Google flamewar

1\. Never accuse C.C.P. gov't directly & plainly, they already have dozens of
counter plans ready, and they are experienced dealing with it. You have to use
tactics to play with CCP gov't

2\. Democracy, freedom means nothing in Chinese culture, esp. in average
people's subconscious mind. Sometimes it even means some fuckedup ideology
sponsored by the US Imperialism.

3\. Keep the flamewar off politics and there are more chances of winning. We
(Chinese) knew Google and the others will lose the battle as soon as the
state.gov announcements came out. The CCP gov't has an ultimate weapon,
patriotism. Any dispute can magically transformed to national security and
ethnic pride by the hands of the official propaganda dept. No matter how
reasonable you are, you will be overtaken by the patriotic voices inside this
country overnight.

4\. Use C.C.P.'s own claim to slam itself. For example, the CCP proudly
declares it as a 'public servant', then why should a servant censor the
master's mind? During days of the initial introductions of the Internet, many
early official textbook in China declares the Internet as something without
borders, with no political regulations, everyone can join and speak, but now
it says it must be ruled under the Party's law and to keep the state stable.

5\. The word 'censorship' sounds trivial to Chinese people, you have to use
more severe and native expressions to interpret the concept. For example
'Literary Inquisition' <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_Inquisition>, or
Naming Taboo. Because the CCP propaganda actively condemn these actions, it's
irony and hilarious to see itself doing the exact shit right now. Another
classy example is you can't copy paste China's Constitution Law on most of
Chinese forums, weblogs or message boards because the system will prompt you
there's 'illegal' keyword in the content.

6\. The CCP gov't always accuse the US for it's cold war mentality, esp. in
the pre-WTO days, but the Party now acts exactly like its role in a Cold War.
There's even a growing anti-globalization hype inside China that the state
should abolish foreign stuff and make Chinese alternative completely on
_everything_

