In a futuristic American city, Firemen no longer put out blazes – they start them – and the prime target for their arson are the great works of literary history. In the society of Fahrenheit 451 people fill their days by driving recklessly, watching wall-to-wall television, and listening to music through their portable iShell…er…Seashell radio sets. The pervasive nature of vacuous entertainment is such that the citizens of this dystopian city have become wholly apathetic to the literal holocaust of the great authors carried out by Firemen. Book-burning is a repellent act and ought to be opposed by every civilised person. Not only is it a public display of censorship, something we all find offensive, but it also represents the destruction of ideas – an attempt to erase important concepts from public knowledge. No one who claims the inheritance of the enlightenment could support such an act.
- Atheism & Theism • Re: Thoughts on Omnipotence, Omniscience and Creation Ex Nih Fri Sep 03, 2010 4:58 am Millennium
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Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category
LiberalViewer to discuss Copyright and Fair Use at VidCon
VidCon 2010, a conference themed around the rising internet video media phenomenon, takes place this coming weekend. I know, it’s the World Cup Final and British Grand Prix, so you won’t be seeing much of me over those two days, but something that should be of interest to all Leaguers is that Communist-Nazi-Liberal-Nazi-Scumbag LiberalViewer will be attending as a panelist to discuss the state of Copyright, YouTube’s policies, and what “fair use” really means with YouTube’s own Head of Communications and Community Policy, Victoria Grand (as well as a former EMI representative Joe Felice).
This is a great opportunity for LV to bring forward questions on behalf of the community, and that’s exactly what he’s offering to do (what a scumbag!). Even if you don’t have any questions you would like to hear asked, please head over to the video embedded below and support it. It is my hope that popularising this discussion will increase the pressure on Google to address its policy surrounding anonymous abuse of the DMCA, flagging system and rating system.
If you can cast your memory right back to January of this year, you may remember that I posted two videos on the subject. The first received widespread attention thanks to Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist) and PZ Myers (Pharyngula) but despite us remaining the top “technical issue”, Google have stayed suspiciously quiet.
The second video was posted in response to Google’s own invitation for site suggestions. The free speech loving community once again dominated this forum, but Google’s canned response only indicated their serious lack of understanding of the issue (and perhaps ability to read?)
Content owners who file copyright infringement notifications under the DMCA do so under penalty of perjury. When we receive a DMCA notification, we remove the posted video, send email to your registered address, and provide notice in your account. Sometimes individuals abuse the process, or are simply mistaken, because determining copyright ownership can be tricky. If you believe your content was misidentified as infringing or is a fair use, you may file a DMCA counter-notification.
Wow. Don’t they understand the word “anonymous”? We know full well how the damned thing is supposed to work Google; we’re telling you that it is open to abuse when anyone can use an unverified identity to file the notice. You know if anonymity wasn’t an option when creating an account to file such a claim, the vast majority of censorship-inspired, false DMCAs wouldn’t be filed, right?
I will be contacting LV directly with this background, just to make sure he knows how YouTube has utterly failed to respond to this issue properly in the past.
Clicky link
Oh Censorship, when will you learn?
This is the Internet.
“Woah! Slow the fork down! What does that mean?”
It means that when you try to get someone’s opinion removed, instead of constructing a mature response, said opinion will come back with force. There is no bullet to the head of popular internet content. It appears, it thrives, and if it suspiciously disappears, memefication occurs. Yes. Memefication.
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
Many moons ago, a YouTube user named DannyMendlow posted a comical advertisement parody entitled “Religion!”. You can tell where this is going, can’t you? The video became hugely popular, making Pharyngula and other blogs if I recall correctly. I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was originally posted, but I’m willing to wager that it was quite some time as I’ve seen this video all over the place.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Digg. It’s a website designed to direct people to popular internet content. By Digging something, you increase its ranking on Digg, increasing the likelihood that it will be brought to the attention of the Digg massive.
DannyMendlow’s video was Dugg (Digged?) to the extent that it reached the front page. Let me make this abundantly clear: that means the video in question was well liked by a large number of people, who felt that others should see it. By some magic shortly after its arrival on the front of Digg, the video was pulled by YouTube as being ‘inappropriate’. Stupidity abounds at the YouTube HQ (which I have on good authority is manned by a crack team of ducks) because the only thing inappropriate about the video is that it’s so depressingly true. Yesterday, DannyMendlow reposted the video for the first time, and in my opinion it deserves support. I urge you to head over and favourite/rate/comment the original. Oh, and why not Digg it too? Enjoy…
Atheist fundamentalism?
Fundamentalism. Not a word I ever expected to hear in connection with atheism, other than by those who don’t know any better or by those who do know better but wish to be provocative. Atheism can’t lead to fundamentalism as it has no doctrine. Atheism has no principles, no practices, no rituals and no dogma. It is simply the absense of theistic belief.
Unfortunately I have now revised my opinion, I think it is now correct to refer to atheist fundamentalism. It might not be strictly accurate, all the above applies, but I do think it is descriptive. I say this in light of a video I have just watched from Coughlan666. I’m not generally a Coughlan fan, his videos are not my cup of tea and I am not subbed to him. In fact I stumbled across his blogtv on one occasion and got booted out by him. So, credentials established, I’m not a Coughlan groupie.
In the video Coughlan reads out a number of messages he has received from atheists since he posted this video attacking Pat Condell, and quite frankly it’s disgusting. I’ll just quote a couple:
(more…)
what is this i don’t even
Paul Chambers, a 26 year-old man from Doncaster has been found guilty of posting an “indecent, obscene or menacing” tweet. Yes, a tweet, on Twitter. In his own words, the tweet was “innocuous hyperbole”. In other words, not harmful, offensive or meant to be taken seriously. Reading the tweet, I can certainly see that. Judge for yourselves:
Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!
Note that this was posted in the context of the airport being closed before he was due to fly. It was not actually directed at the airport, but when found by an employee was reported to the police, who arrested him. He has been fined £1,000 and now has a criminal record. Ever the gentleman, Stephen Fry has offered to shout the fine, but the man’s life will almost certainly take an unnecessary dent* from this fiasco and I can’t help but wonder how the average British tax-payer feels, knowing how the justice budget is being spent.
I found the Judge’s words to be the most staggering part of the story:
A district judge ruled the Tweet was “of a menacing nature in the context of the times in which we live”.
Tell me, what isn’t menacing in the context of the times in which we live? Have we really made so little progress in our efforts to combat terrorism over the last decade? What good is an expensive ‘War on Terror’ abroad if we still live in terror at our computers?
More painful though, is the ironic reference to context. Since, in the context of the times in which we live, isn’t this OBVIOUSLY a joke?
Apparently not.
Click here to follow this news on Twitter.
*Update: It seems Paul was half-way through his accountancy qualification. The conviction will officially prevent him from graduating. That makes me a sad panda.
If Men Look At My Wife The Universe Will Fold In On Itself
Seen this? A few days late with it, but I’m blithely unconcerned.
A Muslim woman has been fined for wearing a burka in a post office in Novara, Italy, after the mayor passed a law forbidding face-covering garb inside public buildings. Mayor Massimo Giordano could maybe be described as an Islamophobe, but as far as I’m concerned that’s like calling someone a murderophobe or a rapistophobe. It’s entirely rational to dislike or fear Islam, which makes it not a phobia but a very sensible intellectual stance.
Singh-ing In The Rain
I can’t really apologise enough for that title.
As I anticipated would happen, Rabbitpirate beat me to laying the first League blogstone on the subject of Simon Singh and his sudden victory. Since I’m not a petty man/as good as Rabbitpirate, I’d love to see him do a longer musing on the subject without the dilution that my opinions would create. However I just wanted to highlight one thing.
Quoting from the BCA’s press release, “The BCA has considered seeking leave to take this matter to the Supreme Court and has been advised there are strong grounds for appeal against the Court of Appeal judgment. However, while it was right to bring this claim at the outset, the BCA now feels that the time is right for the matter to draw to a close. ”
Isn’t that beautiful? The legal equivalent of saying “I could smash your face in, I could . . . any time I wanted . . . only I’m not going to. Any time. But now I’m going home.” For “been advised there are strong grounds for appeal” read “quick, save face ANY WAY WE GODDAMN CAN.” And what’s the best way to save face? Lie. If there were truly strong grounds for appeal the BCA, an organisation that has happily made a decent, genuine, intelligent and (I’m fortunate to know this from personal experience) really lovely man suffer tremendously for years, would without hesitation appeal to continue. Of course they would. Singh said mean*, hurtful** and unfortunately absolutely true things about them so they responded with petty legality. If there was the slightest chance the case could be pursued, don’t you think the BCA would go for it? Just to hurt Simon?
I love seeing people forced to back down after attempting to use laws to censor dissenting voices. We’ve all had our run-ins with DMCAs on Youtube, but Singh has become the poster boy for hope and reason against the odds. And as the BCA sidles grumbling into the shadows, we can only hope that libel laws everywhere face a swift dissolution.
Rabbitpirate? Over to you, sir.
* “You are all frauds”
** “Your mothers are ladies of questionable moral integrity”
This time victory really is ours
A really quick post as I don’t have any more details than this right now but it seems the BCA have dropped their case against Simon Singh. No doubt this will be on every skeptic and atheist blog for the rest of the week so we will all be inundated with details in no time. For right now I am sure you will all join me in offering our congratulations to Simon and our thanks for having the courage to stand up for rational thinking and good science like he did. We love ya man.