It is understandable that many are outraged, some going as far as to say it would endanger our troops overseas in countries such as Afghanistan. I’m not a fan of the Quran burning or the viewpoint behind it either. I’m not sure what exactly it will accomplish besides further anger an already irritated Muslim population, both inside the US borders and outside. But neither am I a fan of censorship, which is what would effectively be happening were the pastor of DWOC prohibited or threatened with arrest for his expression. According to the second story linked above, Rackspace has already taken the DWOC website offline. I’m not really a fan of this either, but it’s certainly understandable that they chose to call the site “hate speech” given the circumstances.

The DWOC’s pastor has the right to his point of view. It is equally our right, however, to express ourselves and put distance between ourselves and those with such radical views. Burning the US flag is protected free speech; as objectionable and politically dangerous as it may be, I see no reason the Quran should be treated differently. However, I believe the DWOC pastor’s pyrophilic protest it is patently devoid of any sense of good taste and it is our duty as Americans–actually, as human beings, whether in the US and abroad–to let our opposing view be known, to condemn this act and others like it, as tasteless, senseless, vile, and putrid. The majority expressing their tolerance and respect for each other will easily drown out a minority expressing hate and disgust, especially in such an ill-advised fashion.

I believe the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people, as I am. It is just as wrong to judge all Muslims based on the actions of the September 11 terrorists as it is to judge all Christians based on the actions of David Koresh and the Branch Davidian cult. And nobody sane would dare try that one.

Pete Hautman recently blogged a nice little piece entitled “The Nasty Thing in the Corner.” It’s about censorship, particularly of works aimed at the teen/young adult segment. This one centers around Ellen Hopkins, who was invited to the Teen Lit Fest in Humble, TX (a suburb of Houston which, I might add, I’ve visited many times).

And then some parents read some of Ellen’s books. To say the least, they didn’t like what they read. Quoting Pete’s post:

“[S]everal” parents… objected to having her at the festival. They brought their concerns to the festival organizers, and one (one!) school librarian agreed with their concerns, and recommended to the school superintendent that Ellen be asked not to come. The superintendent went along with the one (one!) librarian’s recommendation. I believe that virtually every other librarian in the Humble ISD was embarrassed and furious over this decision.

… [A] handful of people — the superintendent, the one (one!) librarian, and “several” (three? five?) parents — took it upon themselves to overrule the vast majority of teachers and librarians and students who had chosen one of the most popular YA authors in America to be their headliner.

That is a form of censorship as damaging and inexcusable as setting fire to a library.

Indeed, popularity does not come without its price. It’s a lesson we should all take to heart.

Pete concluded the post by noting his own withdrawal from the festival, as well as that of Melissa de la Cruz, then updates in the following days to note the withdrawals of Tara Lynn Childs and Matt de la Pena.

And then finally just yesterday, this story hit the UPI newswire:

HUMBLE, Texas, Aug. 28 (UPI) — A teen literary festival in Humble, Texas, was canceled after writers protested the removal of best-selling author Ellen Hopkins from the event.

So here’s the lesson to be learned: if you deal in censorship, don’t expect those you are censoring to stick around. Authors are a more tightly-knit group than one might otherwise expect.

I do regret that the rest of Humble, the majority who anxiously awaited the appearance of Ellen Hopkins, have now lost their chance, and in fact, won’t even have a festival to go to. But one should not blame Ellen or the other authors for that. Blame the parents, the librarian (!), and the superintendent (!!) who partook of the vile, censorious acts that led to the withdrawal of Ellen’s invitation. And by all means, let the students learn about censorship from this experience as well.

UPDATE: I’ve just been made aware of Ellen’s own blog containing several entries about the situation, in particular this entry on August 10 and two later entries on August 18 addressing censorship.

Tom Jancar, owner of the Jancar Gallery in LA, posted the video in 2009 and it had received “hundreds of hits” during the time it was up, and also notes Susan is “doing everything posible not to be sexy.”

While I understand Google (who now own YouTube) not wanting the site to become a haven for pornographic short films, there is a difference between obvious pornography and artistic nudity. I saw the clip of Dressing Up on Susan’s website and while Susan is definitely fully naked in the beginning of the clip, I would call this artistic nudity. (It’s still almost certainly NSFW though.) Hopefully, some other site can host this video since apparently it’s too hot for YouTube.

Seriously, how can Google allow this Australian news clip with a straight face at the same time they mercilessly take down Dressing Up?

Thus, we are then left to assume that this is direct and wanton retaliation for Julian’s activities related to Wikileaks, specifically (quoting the article):

Last year, Wikileaks published a list of websites which were to be banned under the government’s proposed internet filter. While the aim of the filter is to block extreme pornography and the like, the blacklist included a number of more prosaic sites such as those of a travel company and a dentist.

Assange said that shortly after his passport was returned he was questioned about a hacking offence committed when he was a teenager.

(I’ll get to the second part in a bit.)

From the looks of things, it appears the Australian government has serious issues with the freedom of information. It is a safe assumption that Australia’s own citizens will be paying for this filtering system through government taxes. As such, they have the right to know what exactly this filter is blocking, and I would also argue the right to opt out of it should they so choose. The blocking of a travel company and dentist, among other obviously non-pornographic sites, falls well within what Australia’s citizens have a right to know. In fact, depending on exactly how the filtering works, it’s something the rest of the world has a right to know as well.

This is an egregious case of censorship by the Australian government and to say the least, it really burns me up. My question: since it is obvious Julian does not like Australia, what is the point in not letting him leave (the obvious consequence of a cancelled passport)?

Now, about the second part. I am quite disturbed that the government of Australia would bring into play an offense Julian committed nearly two decades ago (and an obvious misdemeanor at that), and imply that it is somehow relevant to who he is today. It isn’t, really. If a misdemeanor from 19 years ago is being worked into the reason his passport is being cancelled, we have even more reason to despise and distrust the Australian government.

Interesting sidenote: Until reading about him on Wikipedia, I didn’t know Julian was the author of the Strobe portscanner. In my early years learning about network security, I used Strobe for many portscans prior to learning of the existence of Nmap (I did not begin using GNU/Linux until 1998).

Juan Faerman, an author in Argentina who wrote a book called Faceboom, the cover of which has the title rendered in a font which easily could be mistaken for Facebook’s official logo, had his profile deactivating shortly after releasing the book, along with two others involved in the book and its marketing.

More troubling than that is Facebook shut down a group for fans of the book, which the trio claims had 30,000 fans at the time of shutdown. This smacks of censorship. It is one thing to claim trademark infringement due to similarities between the book’s cover and the official Facebook logo, but I feel Facebook crossed way over the line here.

Most troubling is that it took VentureBeat’s inquiry as well as an uproar in Latin American media in order for Juan to get his account back. This is unacceptable. Shame on you, Facebook.

At one time I wrote, but did not publish, a no-nonsense parody of one of Facebook’s help files. Which one, you ask? Okay, I’ll come clean. I parodied the one about the block function after someone blocked me. I was hesitant to publish it, if for no other reason because I’m not sure where it should go. It’s too good, and unfortunately, also a bit too no-nonsense and too profane to put in a blog post.

I’d like to think Facebook wouldn’t deactivate my account over it, though. The case for a distributed social network that cannot be arbitrarily censored by any one party is a lot closer to being made if Facebook were to do so, however.

The particular app in question may well set a relative low in taste. I’m not going to judge that. What I am going to judge, is Apple’s utterly senseless and arbitrary censorship of iPhone content, specifically applications.

I was asked by my mom recently what I thought of the iPad (which will have similar restrictions to the iPhone and iPod). I’m not including the full text of my response here, but regular readers should have some idea how it went. (You may want to do some catch-up reading if you are new to this blog.)

When it comes down to it, I’d really rather not have anything bad to say about companies like Apple or their products. But dubious and arbitrary decisions like this do not sit well with me as a sworn opponent of censorship. And as long as Apple and other companies continue to make dumb moves like this, I’ll likely keep calling them out as I find them. I’d let TUAW do it instead, but it appears its author(s) will more than happily cave and essentially pat Apple on the back for a clearly censorious move.

A Google spokesman said in a statement, “We have heard from users in Iran that they are having trouble accessing Gmail. We can confirm a sharp drop in traffic, and we have looked at our own networks and found that they are working properly. Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possibly because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online.”

I have never been a huge fan of Google; they are a prime example of a corporation starting out and gaining trust during its startup period, then betraying that trust after growing far enough beyond the “small company” phase. I have even put up a video, on Google-owned YouTube no less, which mentions “don’t be evil” becoming a “[beep]-damn joke.” (Said sort of in the heat of the moment, and yes, I even did my own beep-out.) And it was in a different context (a YouTube partner getting hung out to dry), but I still don’t think “don’t be evil” as a Google motto holds much credibility at all. (If you want to cut to the chase, it’s at 1:42 to 2:13.)

It’s not surprising at all that Google will work to restore Gmail access to the Iranian citizens; it’s in Google’s business interest to do so. I definitely would not expect Google to take it lying down.

One thing worse than Google having carte blanche to snoop on the emails of Iranian citizens, however, would be for the Iranian government to have that same carte blanche. It’s also troubling from an anti-censorship standpoint any time a government–at any level, whether national, state/province, or local–tries to stop or reroute the flow of information. If the Iranians want to use Gmail, they should have the choice. There are better choices out there.

It also has occured to me the Iranian government, having become used to its power thirst being quenched by control of “old media (radio, TV, and newspapers), is quite possibly hostile towards the entire concept of the Internet. Technology has marched on, and the era of state-controlled media is rapidly becoming obsolete. There are ways around even the Great Firewall of China. As said by John Gilmore in a 1993 TIME magazine interview, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

So yes, I applaud the opposition of the Iranian government’s pathetic attempt at censorship, but I understand the reasons why Google is doing so as well. Yes, Iranians should be allowed to choose Gmail, however, they should also be aware of the alternatives and the rationale for choosing something else.

If it’s the same as this definition from merriam-webster.com then I honestly can’t tell what all the uproar is about. Quoted below just so you can see what I’m referring to:

Main Entry: oral sex
Function: noun
Date: 1973

: oral stimulation of the genitals : cunnilingus, fellatio

The reason given is, to me, lamer than a one-legged duck:

“It’s just not age appropriate,” said [district spokesperson Beth] Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district.

Particularly troublesome–and according to the story, parents and members of the school board have a problem with this too–is that it is based on one parent’s complaint.

I concur in principle with Rita Peters, a school board member who is quoted in the story as saying “If we’re going to pull a book because it has something on oral sex, then every book in the library with that better be pulled.” I say “in principle” here because the far more likely outcome is that this silly run of censorship will be stopped dead in its tracks because nobody will want to go through an entire school library looking for mentions of such things.

It’s a slippery slope, and I don’t think there’s a single place where one can draw the line that will make every parent happy. Besides, the kids will learn about “the birds and the bees” at some point anyway. Should that be taught in first grade? Probably not. The age at which it is appropriate is a topic of debate and may not even be the same for every child. What is not appropriate, at any age, is teaching our children that censorship is an acceptable response to objectionable material.

The scary part is a quote at 2:54 into the video:

Back at the secret test site, police helicopters claimed the entire airspace was restricted. They even threatened our Local 2 Investigates pilot with action from the FAA if we didn’t leave. But we checked with the FAA several times and there never was a flight restriction. That leaves some to wonder whether the police are ready to use terrorism fears since 9/11 to push the envelope even further into our private lives.

Really, HPD? What jurisdiction are you operating under? Airspace is the FAA’s jurisdiction; local police departments cannot arbitrarily restrict airspace. If local police were allowed to restrict airspace at will we would have total chaos, and there would be little use for the FAA at all.

The KPRC-TV news team had every right to gather the information they did. It is unfortunate that the law enforcement agencies running this exhibition (particularly HPD) did not secure the proper airspace restriction from the FAA, relying instead on the “no media allowed” on the invitation and bully tactics.

I think HPD is owed a visit by the FAA for what certainly appears to be a nominal disrespect of Federal law, possibly much worse. Law enforcement agencies must operate within the law, or risk losing the respect of the citizens which they have sworn to protect and serve. Example: Ever seen a police cruiser blasting by you, well in excess of the posted limits, without lights? They’ll say it’s a “code 2″ or something similar, an emergency that’s just enough of an emergency that speed limits can go out the window, but not for lights and siren. Now, no matter what emergency we, the common citizens have, we are subject to getting a ticket if we do that. The same goes for stop signs and red lights, or even parking tickets.

And I’m not even touching on the downright creepy surveillance allowed by this technology yet. That’s almost a whole rant in and of itself. The fact that HPD went to these lengths to hide their new toy (which quite possibly fly in the face the First Amendment of the US Constitution in addition to FAA regulations) is quite chilling, and makes me wonder what kind of a society we live in now in \2010. The report mentions speed limit enforcement as one possibility; I think I made my viewpoint clear on that above. This is the stuff of dystopian sci-fi novels, made into reality. Sorry to disappoint, but I’d prefer as much of that be kept fiction as possible.

Wired.com’s Threat Level blog reports on an attempt by the TSA to censor two bloggers who posted a TSA document describing screening procedures, sent to many major airports worldwide (not just in the US). According to one of these blogers, Steven Frischling, “they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

The TSA agents who visited Steven at his home the evening of 2009-12-29 aggressively questioned him about the source of the document as well as threatened him with the loss of his job and a “security risk designation”– something which may be a mere annoyance for people like me who don’t fly very often, but which carries far greater ramifications for someone who works for an airline as Steven does.

It’s a pretty low blow to aggresively and mercilessly threaten an airline employee while he is holding his three-year-old daughter (as Steven was). This is a huge abuse of Steven’s civil liberties, and it is alarming to me that the TSA would use a subpoena in a similar manner to a search warrant. The two are not the same thing.

Shame on you, TSA agents who did this. How disgraceful, cold, thoughtless, and unkind of you.

For those of you out there who find yourself in a similar spot, be aware of the difference between a subpoena and a search warrant. It’s a good idea to have contact information for the local office of organizations like the ACLU and the EFF handy, especially for bloggers who write about issues the least bit controversial. (And let’s face it, blogs without a little controversy once in a while tend to get a bit boring.)

It’s sad that we even need something like this. Copyright is not inherently evil; as originally implemented, the Statute of Anne accomplished a quite noble goal when originally passed back in 1710. However, somehow, someway, we as a society (and it’s not just the US anymore, but most of the world) have gone from a reasonable, single 14-year term to what is a nominally limited term that in reality, may as well be perpetuity (70 years from the author’s death, 95 years from publication, 120 years from creation).

In addition, the entire concept of fair use has gone out the window. I wrote a bit about the NFL’s heavy-handed abuse of copyright back on 2009 January 15. (It’s been almost ten months, long enough for the next NFL season to have started, and nobody ever sent me a URL of a video of this play that is still online.) This is a clear example of fair use, about as clear as they get. And yet, YouTube yanks it because the NFL says “that’s copyrighted.”

I could go on and on. It’s time we move to restore copyright to some modicum of sanity: fourteen years, plus a fourteen year renewal, and then public domain. We also need more exceptions to allow for the preservation of works that would otherwise just disappear due to decay of the media onto which they are recorded.

Otherwise, we have something intended to encourage innovation, but which in fact discourages and destroy it. We don’t need that, and it’s time to wake up and realize that’s where we are headed. Don’t believe me? Patents are already being abused this way against computer software.

The St. Petersburg Times recently reported on the Southeast Conference (SEC) issuing an edict to its twelve member schools, further limiting the amount of audio, video, and real-time blogging allowed at practices, games, and news conferences.

The truly disturbing part, is that according to this same edict, fans are now barred from updating social networking sites from the stands. This includes updating Twitter or Facebook, posting pictures to Flickr, or uploading videos to YouTube, and (I would assume) live blogging during a game.

This policy is not just galactically stupid, it’s an enforcement nightmare and has untold masses of sports fans in an uproar.

This quote is about as direct and to-the-point as one can get:

“I would guess,” said Mike Masnick, the editor of the respected blog techdirt, “that they’re realizing that anyone can be a reporter or a broadcaster these days.

A.J. Liebling’s famous quote, which I’ve used here before, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one,” is about to become about as quaint as the printing presses of his era.

Information wants to be free. Technology has advanced to the point where video cameras can be combined with a device that’s nominally a telephone. This policy, even if nominally a success, will still reflect very badly on the SEC as an inept attempt at censorship, doomed to failure in the long term.

(Note: I now also see the quote attributed to H.L. Mencken. I’m not sure which attribution is actually correct. If anyone knows for sure drop me a line using the comment form.)