Will the UK get its own 'Great Firewall'? | Hacker News Reader

Will the UK get its own 'Great Firewall'?

econsultancy.com

40 pointsadam-_-14 comments

This just means that officials will use copyright to censor information which is embarrassing. For example, if something appears on Wikileaks which they don't approve of they can just claim that the leaked document is under copyright and block the site.

Ohh its worse than that. They can just think that Wikileaks might in the future host some copyrighted material and block it.

Based on how our Parliament passed this I should imagine that censorship may well be the least of our worries for our democracy.

They already can do that. Remember when Wikipedia was censored in the UK?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/dec/08/intern...

That wasn't the government. That was a non-profit organisation consisting of all the ISPs in the country and a few other bodies.

The sad thing was the level of ignorance shown in the debate. While I wouldn't expect an MP to be an expert in everything, the least they could do is seek out experts and remember that lobbyists are not impartial experts.

The scary thing is this level of ignorance probably applies in all debates.

> the least they could do is seek out experts and remember that lobbyists are not impartial experts.

Note that experts aren't impartial either. Yes, they may be impartial on some things (such as the appropriate length of packets), but those are rarely the issue in the political sphere.

For example, the 2 degree "threshold" in the AGW debate is completely artificial. There's nothing scientifically significant about 2 degrees warmer (1.5 and 2.5 are more and less of the same) yet look at how the "experts" talk about it.

Or at least all debates were the MPs aren't directly interested. Debates about legal immunities, tax breaks and such stuff for MPs probably have a higher level of discourse.

It seems quite likely that most or all of the world is going to have some sort of censorship, if trends are indicative anyway.

All of the world already has censorship.

For example, in America today, here are some of the things censored: kiddie pr0n (including fictional text); pirated copyrighted works; works inciting the violation of laws; works describing how to violate laws (e.g., how to make drugs).

Every nation in the world has mandatory censorship. The only variable is what speech is subject to it.

And how strict the laws are applied. And what the punishment is for breaking those laws.

Where in the world does not already have some sort of censorship? Somalia?

Nevermind, this goverment will be gone soon.

But the laws they made will remain in their wake.

Here in the USA, the GOP is learning the same lesson. They didn't mind the power that GWB consolidated in the Executive. But now that the DEMs control that office, the GOP isn't very happy with sleeping in their own bed.

(that's a lot of metaphors I'm mixing in just a short post!)

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