excellent article
John Moore: Censorship starts with porn
John Moore | 13/07/25
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/07/25/john-moore-censorship-starts-with-porn/
Censorship always sounds like a practical notion at first blush. There are objectionable and dangerous things in the world, and we would all be the better if they were suppressed, or at the very least, harder to access.
So British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal that Internet providers filter pornography and limit access to those who specifically request adult content sounds harmless enough. After all, children will be protected from accidentally stumbling across trans-sexual rape fantasies while searching for the latest accessory for their American Girl doll. In these pages, National Post columnist Barbara Kay recently applauded the initiative as “long-overdue.”
The problem with censorship is that its advocates always presume that whoever becomes gate keeper will be as sensible and worldly as they are. I enjoy reading Ms. Kay’s columns, but the idea of her deciding what I can and cannot consume on the Internet is about as appealing to me as the notion of an Imam filtering content would be to her.
Or … perhaps I am on to something, here. Why not let the religious faithful nominate the sites that would be available only by “special request”? Obviously, they would start with pornography — and we all know the world would be a better place without porn. If the censorship committee included Evangelical Christians and Mormons I suppose, we would also have to start filtering for any suggestion of premarital sex, unfaithfulness or homosexuality. And really, if we’re going to be even-handed about things, the Amish need to have a say. So, no buttons.
Because sites that provide instructions on how to turn a pressure cooker into a bomb serve no purpose but to promote terror attacks, we could block them as well. While we’re at it, we could block the sites that foment the kind of political dissent that leads to terror in the first place. And if we’re going to filter for sedition, we might as well censor anything that militates against the established wisdom of the government of the day. In Canada, that would be David Suzuki, Maude Barlow and the NDP.
Here’s a radical idea: Let’s subcontract Internet-governance to the Taliban. When they aren’t busy shooting Pakistani school girls for mouthing off, they can filter websites for other depictions of female willfulness and depravity. After all, there is no greater authority on female virtue than Islamists.
Soon the Internet would be reduced to videos of cats flushing toilets … although, because the depiction of toilets is objectionable in some circles, I suppose we would have to censor those as well.
The Internet is about the free access to, and dissemination of, information. Dictatorships the world over think they are doing their own people a service by cutting them off from Twitter, Facebook and Google. It makes perfect sense to the Chinese communists to prevent citizens from seeing content that might undermine public order.
So allow me to be the guy who stands up for porn. If you don’t want your kids to see it, create your own filter. Then see how long it takes them to work around it anyway.
end
John Moore: Censorship starts with porn
John Moore | 13/07/25
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/07/25/john-moore-censorship-starts-with-porn/
Censorship always sounds like a practical notion at first blush. There are objectionable and dangerous things in the world, and we would all be the better if they were suppressed, or at the very least, harder to access.
So British Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal that Internet providers filter pornography and limit access to those who specifically request adult content sounds harmless enough. After all, children will be protected from accidentally stumbling across trans-sexual rape fantasies while searching for the latest accessory for their American Girl doll. In these pages, National Post columnist Barbara Kay recently applauded the initiative as “long-overdue.”
The problem with censorship is that its advocates always presume that whoever becomes gate keeper will be as sensible and worldly as they are. I enjoy reading Ms. Kay’s columns, but the idea of her deciding what I can and cannot consume on the Internet is about as appealing to me as the notion of an Imam filtering content would be to her.
Or … perhaps I am on to something, here. Why not let the religious faithful nominate the sites that would be available only by “special request”? Obviously, they would start with pornography — and we all know the world would be a better place without porn. If the censorship committee included Evangelical Christians and Mormons I suppose, we would also have to start filtering for any suggestion of premarital sex, unfaithfulness or homosexuality. And really, if we’re going to be even-handed about things, the Amish need to have a say. So, no buttons.
Because sites that provide instructions on how to turn a pressure cooker into a bomb serve no purpose but to promote terror attacks, we could block them as well. While we’re at it, we could block the sites that foment the kind of political dissent that leads to terror in the first place. And if we’re going to filter for sedition, we might as well censor anything that militates against the established wisdom of the government of the day. In Canada, that would be David Suzuki, Maude Barlow and the NDP.
Here’s a radical idea: Let’s subcontract Internet-governance to the Taliban. When they aren’t busy shooting Pakistani school girls for mouthing off, they can filter websites for other depictions of female willfulness and depravity. After all, there is no greater authority on female virtue than Islamists.
Soon the Internet would be reduced to videos of cats flushing toilets … although, because the depiction of toilets is objectionable in some circles, I suppose we would have to censor those as well.
The Internet is about the free access to, and dissemination of, information. Dictatorships the world over think they are doing their own people a service by cutting them off from Twitter, Facebook and Google. It makes perfect sense to the Chinese communists to prevent citizens from seeing content that might undermine public order.
So allow me to be the guy who stands up for porn. If you don’t want your kids to see it, create your own filter. Then see how long it takes them to work around it anyway.
end
:facepalm: :'( :
