Repost Re: [LINK] the myth of government censorship

[Sam Hinton]

Argh... Below is a repost of a post I sent yesterday that got through to
some but skipped off outta link because I mistyped the address :\

Sorry!

Hi Deus, link,

Deus asked:
> can you tell exactly who is behind the drive to make people conform? and
> conform to what?

I think the point that some modern post-structuralist social theorists make
is that the "who" is the system as a whole.  The "what" is the norm or
average that the system defines.

It's not just some dark guy sitting in a room making plans to control the
Internet by installing a brutal regime of top-down government censorship,
but an emergent property of a complex system.  In this respect the who is
you, me, link-listers, etc. That is, everyone and the system which we create
(which includes resistance, which is part of the dynamic system).

One of the important insights from recent social theorists like Pierre
Bourdieu and Michel Foucault is the idea that there is a relationship
between power and knowledge.  Power can be said to structure knowledge and
vice-versa.  

An example might be an ISP who decides to get rid of certain kinds of
information that he or she deems inappropriate.  That ISP is making a
decision based upon their knowledge, which is defined by who they are
(male/female, gen-x/baby-boomer, gay/straight, western/eastern among
millions of others) and the structures of the society and cultures in which
they live.  

The point is that to some extent, we are all a product of the society in
which we live, and the way we think - even the things we are capable of
thinking, are dependent upon the social matrix that we're part of.  At one
level, the ISP is making a decision on the basis of their own personal moral
compass.  But at another level, that moral compass is constructed by the
society in which he or she lives.

I think this is a really important principle for understanding the way
control works on the Internet.  It's not through blatant overt manipulation,
but through a more subtle infusion of values and ways of thinking throughout
the society, and then the reinforcement of those values by groups within the
society who can benefit from it.

IMHO it's not takedown notices or cease and desist letters that introduces
control in the Internet. I see these things as being  symptomatic of a more
fundamental shift in underlying values within the community, which are led
by the Government and supported by groups within the society.  The Internet
is controlled when these things encourage us, as individuals, to make
decisions or take actions that censor ourselves or others.


Cheers,
Sam