[LINK] Censorship Issues..

[Viveka]

At 9:20 PM +1100 17/2/03, Bob Bain wrote:
>          a) censorship
>          b) copyright
>  and  c) privacy were clearly labeled.

Hi Bob,

I'm glad you're unravelling these issues. In your earlier posts, as 
well as letters to parliamentarians, they were intermingled, and I 
hope that this process will allow you to separate them, for all our 
benefits, including those of your causes which find community support.

Privacy concerns will probably find support on this list. Videos 
which are illegally obtained, for example by invading privacy, are 
evidence of crime, and their purveyors are accessories to that crime. 
Censorship is an insufficiently powerful mechanism to deal with this. 
Refusal of classification isn't enough; privacy invaders should be 
stopped and punished.

Material which simulates invasion of privacy is quite different. 
There is a school of thought that such material can incite actual 
invasion of privacy. Right now I'm watching 24, which deals with 
villains who are attempting to set off a nuclear bomb, and heroes who 
deal out summary execution. Community standards evidently consider 
that this will not incite viewers to set off nuclear devices or to 
kill criminals without trial. That analogy seems to me to be 
applicable, but perhaps not to you, since you appear to oppose 
material simulating invasion of privacy.

Copyright issues will probably receive a mixed reception on this 
list, since copyright in the age of mass publishing and near-free 
distribution and reproduction is in contention.

You have stated that you are against censorship for its own sake. Why 
then are you opposed to videos of (ahem) coprophilia? It would appear 
that people are engaged in consuming one another's bodily excretions 
willingly, however unappetising that may be. I don't want to watch 
people doing this, so I don't, and no-one who doesn't wish to see 
this is being forced to, as far as I know. So what's the problem?

Just wondering,

V.
-- 
Viveka Weiley, Karmanaut.
{ http://www.karmanaut.com | http://www.planet-earth.org
    http://www.MacWeb3D.org | http://sydney.siggraph.org.au }
Hypermedia, virtual worlds, human interface, truth, beauty.