UK's Internet censorship continues apace

The ongoing war by the British government against variant sexuality and internet freedom of speech has been stepped up a gear, it seems.

This was always on the cards since the Department of Culture, Media and Sport carried out an investigation of what they called "harmful material on the internet" and published their report on it. But it seems that the Culture Secretary has moved the plans forwards slightly, to apply a cinema-style ratings system to internet websites.

While it is true that, as these censorship-mad Government ministers are fond of saying, "the internet is a dangerous place" - so is the world we live in. As the anti-censorship campaigners so often point out, if you wouldn't let your children wander the streets alone at night, why would you let them wander the internet alone either?

But the other thing that puzzles me is how on Earth they expect to be able to enforce such a thing! I don't know how many movies the BBFC views per year, but I imagine it must be far fewer, by at least 3 orders of 10, than the number of websites there are in the world, and there must surely be hundreds more website starting up each day, it seems to me. How do they imagine they will be able to keep track of all these sites, and apply a rating system to them? We already know that rating systems for movies and video games vary widely even just across Western Europe (in some European countries, there's no equivalent of the banned/rejected category that our BBFC can slap on - as I understand it, the USAian film classification system is essentially voluntary in nature, maybe USA citizen can correct me if I'm wrong?) Japanese cultural norms are very different from ours so images that might be considered totally abhorent and illegal in the UK might be seen as completely tame in Japan, and vice versa.

Andy Burnham (I'm tempted to call him "Burnham at the stake"...) says:

"If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach."

Mr. Burnham, there is a very very strong reason for that. Which is that governments cannot be trusted, and censorship is always one of the first weapons that a government uses when it wants to control the populace, and to abuse human rights. Look at how China seeks to control access to the internet (and how Google caved in to them). Look at how Saddam Hussein's Iraq placed elaborate firewalls around its nations' computers. In former times, look at how oppressive regimes clamped down on independent publications and broadcasts. Creating a space that is out of reach of governments is essential to freedom of speech everywhere. Now you want to destroy that safe space, where ideas can be discussed, even when the majority of the population might find them abhorrent (rememebr - once upon a time, homosexuality was deemed abhorrent, and now it is protected in British law - imagine how much quickler that could have happened if they'd had the internet).

I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now. It’s true across the board in terms of content, harmful content, and copyright. Libel is [also] an emerging issue.

Copyright and libel are areas that have been dealt with (albeit rather badly in the case of copyright). The concept of "harmful content" is something with which I struggle. I just don't know how words or pictures can be deemed "harmful" except in the senses that libel or invasion of privacy already cover.

There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical.

You're not the only one who feels that way, Mr. Burnham-at-the-stake. It's just that not everyone agrees with your definition of what should not be allowed to be viewed. Mediawatch-UK want almost everything with the slightest hint of sexuality banned. Islamic "fundamentalists" want anything that they perceive as contrary to Qur'anic law to be banned. I want any derogatory references to sex workers, trans folks, or kinky folks to be banned. Ideally, I'd also have any mention of Manchester United banned from the airwaves and the internet too.

Some people want others' political views to be erased from the airwaves and the internet. Some people want all reference to the Nazi crimes against humanity to be stricken from the record. Some people want all reference to homosexuality to be erased. Others would like to see any information about birth control to be censored.

This is the monumental problem with "Some content should not be available to be viewed". Who gets to decide which content that is? And why the fuck should ANYONE else trust them!? As explained above, it is this fundamental flaw that means that there must always be a space, and the internet provides that space, where discourse is completely free, where governments do not control it. This is the fundamental safeguard against abuse of human rights - it doesn't stop them completely, but at least it means they do not go unnoticed.

This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people

And here we must ask "what constitutes harm?" I have mentioned above "libel" (for instance, false accusations of paedophilia against a teacher) and "invasion of privacy" (for instance, having nude pictures of oneself posted to the internet by someone else). We might add to that "incitement to violence" where there is a clear injunction to commit acts of violence against an individual, or against a certain identifiable group. But laws already cover these, and no amount of "classification systems" are going to make much difference to the ability to prevent such hate crimes happening.

Where crimes against a person have been committed in the creation of internet content (for example where child porn is involved), then again, we already have laws that deal with the perpetrators, and the internet content is often evidence against them. Similarly, where internet content is used in the commission of a crime ("grooming", planning a terrorist attack, or whatever) then we have laws that deal with that.

But "harm" can be open to other interpretations, too. For instance, supposing an internet blogger discovers evidence of a government minister's corruption and posts that evidence online - would that not be "harmful" to the minister, since zie might be in danger of losing hir job? Should it then be censored as "harmful to other people"?

There are people for whom "oh, it made me feel a bit icky" is interpreted as "harm". Should we take their complaints and make them the basis for censorship, also?

"This is not a campaign against free speech" Bollocks. Of course it is. And it has been going on for at least 7 years.