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Comment by sbt | Hacker News Reader

> Unfortunately, I don't expect the above to actually happen :(

The problem is that the incremental cost to filtering additional material is now virtually zero. I'm not sure how this would play out in Britain, but I know many countries where a conservative government would have a field day expanding this list. It is easy for a politician to make the case that something should be blocked (think of the children!), but I am guessing no politician would stake his personal capital on unblocking something even remotely controversial. Unfortunately, now Britain has set a precedent, and I could easily see other governments in Europe pointing to Britain in justifying similar firewalls.

Therefore, I have concluded that we have a binary choice, firewall or no firewall. To me, this is a simple decision, I would not entrust any committee at all with the management of what should be considered obscene.

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That's an excellent point.

There needs to be a mechanism added that would make removing an item from the filter as easy as adding an item to the filter. Some way of doing this without putting reputation at risk. Any ideas?

I'd suggest that removing a site should be automatic but adding one requires a review by an actual person.

You're trying to solve, with extra policy, technology and ingenious ideas, something that wouldn't be a problem in the first place without the stupid law.

That's how some supporters of free speech and people against censorship are now on the defensive -- trying to imagine how to make a censorship system "better" instead of questioning it's legitimacy in the first place.

That's a huge, wide open, Overton's window here.

> trying to imagine how to make a censorship system "better" instead of questioning it's legitimacy in the first place

Next, apply this same reasoning to governments themselves.

For example, there's practically nothing we can do to make governments better. No, voting doesn't count. Obama vs Romney is a prime example - which of them was not going to be serving Wall Street's interests?

Writing to your representatives isn't working all that well either. SOPA? CISPA? NDAA? -Where are they now, and in what form?

> For example, there's practically nothing we can do to make governments better.

Sure there is.

> No, voting doesn't count.

Sure, voting on its own is of limited utility. Marketing better ideas of what government should be doing is the big thing that can be done to make it better. If there's not better ideas, or they aren't widespread enough to have a electorally-significant constituency that prioritizes them, voting isn't going to be able to effect much positive change.

> Marketing better ideas of what government should be doing is the big thing that can be done to make it better.

Also known as "writing to your representatives" or "political activism" etc. But it doesn't work, and it doesn't matter. Does a slave master care about what his slave wants? They simply don't give a fuck.

Do you think the people in power do not know that Americans don't want to be detained indefinitely without due process or declared "enemy combatants" and shipped off to Guantanamo to be tortured on a whim?

If they do know, why is the NDAA in effect and why has it been renewed?

Do you think the people in power do not know that Americans don't want to pay for untold billions of dollars' worth of Wall Street's gambling losses?

If they do know, why are big banks given all those bail-outs?

And so on. The list of offences is practically endless.

> If there's not better ideas, or they aren't widespread enough to have a electorally-significant constituency that prioritizes them, voting isn't going to be able to effect much positive change.

I can't help but wonder whether you're working for the government. But I'll wrap this up here.

>Do you think the people in power do not know that Americans don't want to pay for untold billions of dollars' worth of Wall Street's gambling losses? If they do know, why are big banks given all those bail-outs?

Those are the wrong questions (or the right questions but with a wrong premise).

That's about the current people in power and their interests and ties.

Not every system of voting/government (including some that are not in effect anywhere currently) has the same potential for abuse, or puts the same scum in power.

Do you think it really matters that a hypothetical future group of rulers might conceivably make decisions that actually benefit the people, when the current ones clearly don't?

Here we are, in 2014, and under these specific circumstances. Reality matters, hypotheticals don't.

>Next, apply this same reasoning to governments themselves. For example, there's practically nothing we can do to make governments better.

Sure there is.

For one, fuck this gerrymandering BS, and use a totally representative of the general population voting system. Encourage the removal of a two-party system.

Second, make voting available to all, remove any obstactles like registration that are made to not let black/poor/etc people vote.

Third, disallow ANY donation over say $100 dollars by any individual entity. So a popular politician can get millions of dollars (by thousands of people), but a not popular cannot get the same amount of money by just one rich backer. And no personal financing of campaings over some small amount (say, $10,000), so that a rich candidate should have no headstart compared to a poor one.

Fourth, make cabinet members electable by the people. With the option to have them thrown out and replaced mid-term.

Fifth, have public referendums for all major new laws, like those SOPA, CISPA etc.

Those are just off of the top of my head. We can come up with much better. Heck, didn't even mention taking advantage of all the internet can offer with regards to e-voting, referendums, transparency, etc.

"Rep vs Dem" and "writing to your senator" is not even politics or democracy. It's a very narrowly defined experience of those, that they have convinced Americans that it's their only option.

You're describing various potential changes to how we're ruled that might make things better. But you see, the problem is that we're ruled at all, not that we're ruled in an unsatisfactory way. This is comparable to thinking that a specific instance of slavery could be "fixed" by getting the slave-master to promise he'll whip his slaves less.

Politicians, and the people in power behind the scenes in particular, aren't responsible to us for anything they decide to do. That's part of why we're all unhappy about the way we're "governed" (=ruled over). Sure, pot was legalized in one state, but meanwhile, the police state kept creeping up just like until now.

Do you think they don't know that people don't want to live in a police state? -Of course they do. But still, they just keep on enacting a police state. Why is that? Either they're somehow not aware of what they're doing, or they simply don't care about what people want (or don't). Now, which do you think is more likely?

This isn't the kind of problem that policy is good at solving. This is a cultural issue: so long as people in general are conservative about what they want their kids to see, removing things from the block list will carry a political penalty for the remover.

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