![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Writer's Block: American Censorship Day!
Nov. 16th, 2011 08:56 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Am I in the US? No. Do I support this bill? No. Am I surprised that at a time when there is high unemployment, huge amounts of inequality between rich and poor which is still growing, and increasing public disatisfaction with both big businesses and those in charge of the country that governments are looking for new ways in which to control spread of information amongst the general public? Sadly also no.
And where America goes the UK often seems to want to follow. Although we do have our own equally badly though out bill, the Digital Economy Bill, which has already lead to BT blocking Newzbin and Newzbin2 (download sites) and there are calls for it to do the same to Pirate Bay.
When we had the riots back in August there was talk of giving the government and/or police powers to force ISPs in the future to block social networking sites turning times of rioting etc so that they can't be used to coordinate the violence. Whether they will go ahead with this remains to be seen.
The thing is if you get the public to distrust each other enough, to be scared of the what might be's, to feed them negative images through the press and media of how the people causing the trouble are like me and you, then you can get them to believe something like this is there own best interest.
I don't believe in the conspiracy stuff that floats around web about such things, but I do think that putting in place something that is poorly thought out, with no clearly defined boundaries on what it can and can't be used for leaves it open to abuse should a more extreme party come to be in charge of the country.
Am I in the US? No. Do I support this bill? No. Am I surprised that at a time when there is high unemployment, huge amounts of inequality between rich and poor which is still growing, and increasing public disatisfaction with both big businesses and those in charge of the country that governments are looking for new ways in which to control spread of information amongst the general public? Sadly also no.
And where America goes the UK often seems to want to follow. Although we do have our own equally badly though out bill, the Digital Economy Bill, which has already lead to BT blocking Newzbin and Newzbin2 (download sites) and there are calls for it to do the same to Pirate Bay.
When we had the riots back in August there was talk of giving the government and/or police powers to force ISPs in the future to block social networking sites turning times of rioting etc so that they can't be used to coordinate the violence. Whether they will go ahead with this remains to be seen.
The thing is if you get the public to distrust each other enough, to be scared of the what might be's, to feed them negative images through the press and media of how the people causing the trouble are like me and you, then you can get them to believe something like this is there own best interest.
I don't believe in the conspiracy stuff that floats around web about such things, but I do think that putting in place something that is poorly thought out, with no clearly defined boundaries on what it can and can't be used for leaves it open to abuse should a more extreme party come to be in charge of the country.