We also have:
The Global Internet Liberty Campaign
An ACLU White Paper: Is Cyberspace Burning?
You should judge for yourself the political leanings of all of these sources, but they do seem to share the point that political censorship is common. It’s not quite as simple as “right wing good, left wing bad”, but AIDS-related, gay and feminist sites seem to feature prominently on the blocked lists.
That site has the word “contraception” in the title and “sex” and “sexuality” in the content. I assume it would be blocked because of one or more of them.
My company blocks sites which their software thinks are pornographic. Just as well. If they were available in addition to the Straight Dope, I wouldn’t get any work done at all!
mattk beat me to it. I don’t know why I didn’t link Peacefire in my last post. It’s an excellent source.
MR
Maeglin and Matt – thank you both for the cites to the sites. GILC says that some filters block out a whole bunch of stuff that ought to be left in. Peacefire says that they disapprove of filters, in part because they don’t agree with the concept of “indecent words or pictures.”
But, I didn’t find where either said that the filters were specifically blocking left-wing politics. There are many of us who think “big government” are indecent words, but to my knowledge no filter reflects that belief.
Maeglin, you criticized conservatives, implying that their desire to block “indecency” has a hidden motive of trying to block left-wing political material. Can you support this criticism?
december, I made no such criticism. With all of the vitriol that goes back and forth between the right and the left, it can be difficult not to be oversensitive.
Here is what I did say:
That internet filtering software blocks sites traditionally aligned with left wing politics may or may not be intentional. I simply don’t know, hence I posited no argument. I can hardly speak for the hidden motives of those who are in alignment with me politically.
MR
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Maeglin *
**Chapter 3 of On Liberty has been batted around for years. It still remains nothing more than bankrupt, post-Enlightenment social Darwinism which presupposes some extrinsic idea of truth and an artificial, atemporal, reified notion of reason, concepts which have drawn fire from philosophers for the past forty years.
Since I don’t think anyone really wants me to rehearse the basic arguments made by postmodernist and poststructuralist philosophers, I’d suggest that you pick up a Foucault Reader. Maybe you’ll even come across it in your philosophy class.**
[QUOTE]
Yeah, I didn’t want to go the postmodern route with this thread either (truth vs. Truth). I’ve adopted a liberal interpretation of Mill in my study of him which would easily address the concerns of One Truth. I tend to think that Mill would likewise be a fan of postmodern thought and once again would would argue for more rather than fewer voices. My point in using him as a resource was simply to illustrate that the diversity of ideas that can be found on the Internet is ultimately a good thing if the alternative is to argue for some limitation (read: censorship) on what one might find.
I’ve not heard Mill or his work described as social Darwinist though–Maeglin, could you expand on this?
Finally, my take on Foucault is likewise compatible with my take on Mill. Foucault was as much a critic of power as he was of words. Mill too argued against irrational power structures (*The Subjugation of Women *). Where I see Foucault as going beyond Mill is in reference to self-censoring. Foucault was not just worried about one voice becoming the right one and therefore the One Truth, he was similarly worried that his own voice might carry undue influence and become too “loud”.