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| Disagree | 58% | 93 votes | Total: 161 votes | |
| Agree | 42% | 68 votes |
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Add to FavoritesCensorship is not the same as international trade barriers.
A trade barrier is a tax or tariff that is designed to make foreign goods cost more than local goods. If the person can afford to pay the price difference, then the goods can be purchased or used. There may be some countries where the good is actually banned, and you are arrested if caught with it, but that is not the normal case. (In the US Cuban Cigars is one example of a banned item that can be purchased if made somewhere else. Cigars are legal, but Cuban Cigars are not, and it takes a chemist to tell the difference if there is no label.)
Censorship is a complete ban of information or a point of view. Having the information or promoting the information leads to jail or fines. Although the elite in the censored countries may have the information, they do not admit to having it and do not promote it.
The closest thing to this in the US, is child porn, where someone with pictures on their hard drive can be jailed only for possessing the pictures. Otherwise the only censorship in the USA is related to security and military.
Some people equate self-restraint with censorship, but for most discussions, censorship is defined as a Government ban. Corporations and individuals can choose to not talk about something, but that is not censorship.
Google has nothing to gain from censorship, since it requires more people and other resources to censor information. They do allow individuals to practice self-restraint by providing adult content filters.
Learn more about this author, Arthur J. Byrnes.
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Agree
I have to say that technically I agree with this statement. That is not the same as saying I don't think it should be done or that it should. I feel for instance that child pornography should be restricted from international trade, whether it be Internet downloads or the delivery of DVDs and magazines overseas. On the other hand I believe that political ideas should not be censored and that countries that refuse to allow such books to cross their borders are wrong to do so. I remind those who already know that George Orwell, author of 1984 also wrote Animal Farm as a companion book to it and managed to get that book through the Iron Curtain of East Germany claiming it was a book on agriculture. Based solely on the front cover there is no indication that it isn't. Although the back cover of most editions I've seen reveal otherwise but I am sure he published it without that part. A used Bookstore I frequent has a slogan which they sell t-shirts, mugs, aprons and other merchandise declaring. The slogan is "Censorship: The assassination of an idea." This is accompanied by the image of a light bulb being shattered, presumably by a bullet. Of course using the light bulb as the classic symbol for an idea just as cartoons have done for over half a century. I agree with this slogan which is why I am not sure I agree with censoring fictional stories that are offensive because once you start down the path of deciding some ideas need to be censored there is no stopping that path, and you must remember that those doing the censoring may not always agree with you on which ideas need to be censored. Just because you may agree in the beginning like with smut,when it changes to political ideas it may be too late by the time you realize you were wrong.
However back to the trade restriction issue, I feel that removing videos made by abusing children, raping women, and killing people, from the Internet, is not really censorship, any more than arresting people who would sell such disgusting things on the streets and then tracking down those who made them is restricting trade. What you are doing is refusing to condone the behavior that was done on these videos. Unfortunately however there is a fine line between the two, and since so many perverted people try to push the limits of the law in order to cater to these bizarre fetishes, simulating illegal activity in technically legal ways. It can often make it difficult to determine who is breaking the law and who isn't among these people. If you have seen episodes of Law and Order SVU on this subject you may know what I am referring to. Things like 18 year olds who pretend to be 15, or even ten to satisfy pedophiles looking for simulated child porn, as well as animation made to look so real that even the police vice squads aren't sure if it is or not. So the question that sparked this debates is merely semantics. The real question is, where do we draw the line? That is a very tough question to answer.
Learn more about this author, Jake Berensen.
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