tometheus's diary

tometheus

Censorship

"Congress ignites Net filter fight: Schools and libraries that receive federal funds will find new strings attached to the money - they'll have to filter Internet content."
ZDNet News article 2000.12.19

So much for free speech in public libraries... (I can maybe understand schools, but libraries are places the government should NOT TOUCH! What will they do next? Burn the medical texts and National Geographics?) How do you tell art from porn? How do you tell medical and anthropological documentation from the 'nasties'? Are we back in the age of the iconoclasts? Are we going to start putting fig leaves on sculptures and paintings that offend our delicate tastes again? Where does it end?

Furthermore, how the frell do they expect the software to filter out all obscene images? (I mean, c'mon... do they expect these kiddie-porn distributors they keep crying about to be nice and put 'blockme' in image names or something?)

It can only get worse from here with the 'religious president' in office... *sigh* Om help us.

Good news: (2001.01.19) The American Library Association has decided to challenge this new law!

Revolt! Read a book! (Recommended book of the day: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury)

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.
Heinrich Heine Almansor

A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison, a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours of sanity and consideration are always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and the martyrs are justified.
'Compensation', by Ralph Waldo Emerson

00:00 - 2000-12-19