Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Free speech for the dumb.

Well, here is my second post for the day. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and right now, we are at a fork of sorts as far as the human story is concerned.

The story thus far

People in the UK are being banned from visiting a particular entry on wikipedia, actually the entry for 'virgin killer' the fourth album by the scorpions, yeah the same untalented fucks who came up with such crappy songs as 'rock you like a hurricane' [for which I played its monotonous and repetitive bass in college for my band]. I really don't remember any more of their songs.

Why ? because the original album cover had a nude underage girl shown on it.

here is the photo if you would like to see for yourself.

[as taken from the wiki article in question, itself]:

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a UK-based non-government organization, added the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer to its blacklist due to the online encyclopedia's use of an image of the original Virgin Killer album cover. As a result, people using many major UK ISPs were blocked from viewing the entire article.[22][23] A modified version of the controversial cover art was used for the "In Trance/Virgin Killer" deluxe boxed edition double album sold worldwide after a 2004 release.[24] Nevertheless, the IWF classified the image of the cover as a "potentially illegal indecent image of a child hosted outside the UK" (whereas their reporting mechanism specifies only "child sexual abuse images hosted outside the UK").[25][26] In a press release, the lawyer for the Wikimedia Foundation stated, "We have no reason to believe the article, or the image contained in the article, has been held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world."[27] Under the Cleanfeed content blocking system, the block was accomplished by ISP proxy systems impersonating Wikipedia's servers, which resulted in degraded performance and left site administrators with little option but to block a significant portion of the UK from editing Wikipedia or creating accounts.[28][29]

This is a deeply disturbing fact for the liberal minded, forward thinking, citizens of the world, a demographic that I consider myself a member of ;)

Because the internet IS true Free Speech. Granted that the wikipedia is not squeaky clean itself, indulging in self-fellatio er... I mean self-censorship from time to time, but we shall overlook this petty difference for the time being in lieu of the larger problem at hand. I will take the liberty of going ahead and assuming that YOU understand the arguments in favor of free speech, and are therefore unbiased, as I go ahead.

Basically, I don't want some crappy, misinformed, holier than thou, conservative lunatics to decide that something is bad for the rest of us and ban it. After all, who is to say that the decisions they make are the right decisions ? Are they not human [although barely] and hence fallible, and error prone ?

You might say 'hey, it doesn't concern you, after all you live in India'

NO!

It does concern me, because the internet is not anyone's property, and policing of said medium is a grave concern that DOES affect all of us. You included. What if they said you can't access the 'Pakistan' wikipedia article from India ? would you be alright with it ?

Coming back to the album, you see the cover was released in reality and hence the subject becomes a matter of historical interest. Just because it is unpleasant for some or is potentially exploitable, does not mean that it never happened. Hell, if they want to follow through with this line of thought, they should as well ban all the articles about the holocaust and other genocides, all science articles, all controversial historical figures etc, as all of these can be 'potentially' dangerous.

Next thing you know, these guys will ban the use of limbs, for they are the principal method by which most humans operate, and hence are the method by which some humans carry out harm on others. What after that ? maybe they will ban penises [Off with his rape-machine dick], hehe, a prerequisite for teh rape. And so on...[you get the picture, right ?]

What is great to see, however is the furore that this decision is creating among the internet populace, the traditional divisions based on nationalities are being temporarily broken down in order to fight a common enemy, members of a certain forum of which I am a regular /b/rowser have decided to use the arsenal of said internet watchbully I mean watchdog, to mount an attack on said organization itself and get the point across, the point being that such censorship is fucking absurd. I won't divulge more information as the story is still developing.

The internet is the one saving grace that we have, a place where we can ignore our limitations, and where you can do anything you like, let's hope these self-righteous hillbillies who promote censorship don't ruin it for the rest of us. Thank god for the internet.

2 comments:

ashwinxn said...

you listen to Psy trance? :)

JerryKantrell said...

Yeah man, reminds me of all those raves that I don't remember attending :D