Re: Say it ain't so: Censorship in America

[Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org>]

On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 11:20:26AM -0400, Blanchard_Michael () emc com wrote:
>  The free service is provided by the Airport (be it government or private, doesn't matter). 

Yes, it DOES matter, and rather a lot.  Private entities aren't
constrained by the First Amendment.  Government entities are.

> If you wish to use it, you abide by the rules and restrictions that they put in place for it's use.  In this case, 
> it's no porn.  

No, it's "no content that this particular piece of censorware in
this particular configuration will block on this particular day".
And as we've repeatedly seen, that always means far more than just porn;
it quite often means "any content that does not meet with the political,
social, religious or other criteria silently imposed by the censorware
vendor".  Or which just happens to match up against their poorly designed,
badly implemented, and sporadically maintained filters.  People such as
Seth Finkelstein have done some excellent work in discovering and
documenting this duplicitous practice, which has swept up sites such as:

        Parish Without Borders
        political campaign sites for Pat Casey, Linda Chapin, Mark Greene
                and many others
        Amnesty International
        Illinois Federation for Human Rights
        Canadian Labour Congress
        the Breast Cancer Legislation Page
        Institute of Australian Psychiatrists
        Mother Jones magazine
        Princeton's page on emergency contraception pills
        Catholic Views Broadcasting Inc.

and many, MANY others -- those are just the ones that happen to either
stand out in my memory or that I have handy notes on.

>   I'm also a BIG fan of arresting anyone that is viewing porn
> in a public area where anyone can walk by and see material that is
> objectionable to them.  

Happily, we have a Constitution in place that prohibits attempted
fascism such as this.  We should also have sufficient awareness
to realize that everything is objectionable to someone, so the
immediate effect of such a draconian law would be to make it
impossible for anyone to work on a computer in public.

"Dispatch, we have a 317 at the outside tables at Starbucks
on Maple Street -- perp viewing lolcats at icanhascheezburger.com.
Oh, and I have a report of another viewing the man page for fsck."

However, should we arrive at the unfortunate situation where this
became law, then I might derive some small enjoyment by indulging
my utter contempt for all things Microsoft by having anyone observed
running Windows hauled off in handcuffs.

Wait...maybe that's not such a bad idea...

---Rsk
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