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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:49AM
from the waiting-until-they-try-to-legislate-"abhorent"-text dept.
from the waiting-until-they-try-to-legislate-"abhorent"-text dept.
Australia has rammed through another law requiring “abhorrent” video, audio or still images to be removed within an hour. This will apply to content providers both in and out of Australia as long as the content is available to Australians. Individuals and companies face jail time and/or huge fines if the content is not removed "within a reasonable time". If the content is found to be hosted in Australia then the Australian government must be alerted. This is yet another knee jerk reaction to the NZ shootings which were streamed live online.
Who is paying for someone to be awake at 3am to curate and remove this stuff?
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Australia Passes Law Requiring Social Media to Remove Content Within one Hour
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Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:28PM (10 children)
Reminds me of the propaganda for why Italy needed to have Mussolini in charge? He made the trains run on time. Even though he didn't [citylab.com]. It's common to find some little tidbit that tyranny does well, even if you have to lie a little.
What happens if we pass this law, have this widespread censorship, and still can't touch the problem you mentioned above? Such genies can't be stuffed back into their bottles easily.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:15AM (9 children)
Unless, of course, we don't get to have widespread censorship, it's not like this is necessarily the only outcome possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:13AM (8 children)
We do have the widespread capability to censor mandated by law in Australia (and other places too). It's not a big jump from that to widespread censorship.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 18 2019, @02:29AM (7 children)
On the same line, we do have hammers that can be used to killing. It's not a big jump from that to widespread head-bashing-with-a-hammer.
Substitute for hammer: licensed firearms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @05:06AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 18 2019, @05:45AM (5 children)
Point is that the use of hammers and firearms have beneficial or deleterious effects in a society in depending so many factors that your "there's a small jump to that" is a gross simplification in the "slippery slope" argumentation.
E.g. after roughly 70 years, making Nazi-related content illegal in Germany haven't caused rampant censorship, abuses of power by the German government or failure of democracy there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @06:17AM (4 children)
Mandating censorship on all media and community forums doesn't have beneficial effects unless one is trying to control the population.
I strongly disagree. It's limited nature merely has resulted in limited failure of democracy, but that did happen. And there is both rampant censorship of that Nazi-related content as well as abuses of power against those who spoke such (which would be the limited failure).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 18 2019, @06:27AM (3 children)
Mandating censorship on all media and community forums doesn't have beneficial effects unless one is trying to control the population.
Your burden to prove it.
A single counterexample is suffice to prove a statement false.
Your right.
Oh. On top of slippery slope, you are adding the Nirvana fallacy and, perhaps, moving goal posts one.
Suit yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @06:35AM (2 children)
First, I leave it as an exercise to the reader that mandating censorship on all such platforms allows for better control of the population through improving the ability to delete and hinder propagation of information that would undermine that control.
So then the question is what other beneficial effects are there to mandating censorship tools on all such platforms? I present as evidence that no one has managed to describe a benefit of any sort from this.
Then where is this counterexample?
I merely checked the boxes you presented. I guess one readily forgets that the censorship is both a failure of democracy and a readily abused power for authorities.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday April 18 2019, @07:51AM (1 child)
Ability is not absolute, checks and balances exists.
Furthermore, "ability" != "actual exercise of ability", so your homework is offering no base for "the democracy sky is falling if you are able to block my speech".
The law doesn't impose any tool, how those who fall under the incidence of this law are going to implement it is at their own choice. I.e. geo-blocking Australia is such a mean and 100% sure the Australian government isn't going to force them to provide services in Australia.
I tabled Germany - still a democracy by the definition of the term, even if not a "full democracy" based on your Nirvana-perfection taste.
I'd suggest you to satisfy your sense of entitlement to absolute freedom of speech by going to shout fire in a crowded theater just to demonstrate that your freedom must trump everything, see how it goes in the "fully democratic" USA (point: limits to free speech are already ubiquitous. The difference is how these limits are defined from one country/culture to another, and I posit there's no "one side fits all" in this regard).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:31PM
In other words, we're going to ignore the abuses of these policies because the courts might block it.
Second part of the first sentence contradicts the first part. "How to implement" doesn't negate "must implement".
Sorry, I don't buy it. It would be trivial for Germany to just not implement that censorship in the first place. So we have a failure in a democracy because someone expends effort to keep it there.
This is a great example of the Nirvana fallacy. Arguing that one shouldn't oppose frivolous and harmful constraints on free speech because free speech cannot be a perfect right.