Censorship

[dagens24]

If the human mind can conceive it, the human mouth should be allowed to say it, or hand allowed to draw and paint it, etc. Why are people so afraid of what we are able to imagine?

 

[Wardnath]

I find it a perfect example of how misguided people are in regards to this matter when they talk about "the n word." Yeah, I hate censorship too, which is why I censored myself there.

I think "censorship" is misunderstood and often the term is simply used as a blanket term to hate against. Don't like censorship? Then the next time you want to tell someone to fuck off and don't, congratulations, you just censored yourself.

"Censorship" isn't a bad thing. It is a tool. It's LOGIC. It's the cosmic brain mouth filter, a spell check of what comes out of our brains. When used appropriately, it is a good thing. Just like restraint, it's that last barrier that keeps us from just flinging shit at something.

It is ABUSE of censorship that is bad. Drinking is not bad, drinking and driving is. Abusing alcohol is. Using alcohol as an excuse is. But drinking, using your head and being responsible, that's fine.

Too often it seems being anti-censorship is simply an excuse to do or say whatever with no regard for what you're actually saying. The old "it's a free country" argument.

People in Libya are DYING for the freedom to be free of things like censorship, the right to simply disagree with the ruling party. THAT I can get behind, because that is true abuse of censorship. It is the censor of the people, to keep them in check and to withold from them their basic freedoms.

But complaining about censorship on the internet because we can't use "dick tits" in everything? Jesus titty fucking Christ.

Aaaaaaaaaand that's a /thread, folks.

 

[parks_86]

Censorship is important to any level of media, not just video games, because there are some truly messed up things that would otherwise be readily available to everyone. I know it's a thrashed example, but look at Rapelay.

However, I can think of two examples of how censorship doesn't work in the modern age. One is thanks to the internet and the huge-scale globalisation it brought with it. The other is the censorship associations.

The two are like chalk and cheese - the internet continually changes and diversifies, finding new methods and bridging gaps faster than anything ever before while our censorship boards seem to be left behind in a pathetically unchanging, unshifting and uncompromising mindset that simply means that the needs and wants of the public it is meant to be serving are not met.

If our various global censorship boards are unable to keep up, not just with their respective consumer base but with the world now as well, then censorship as a whole has missed the point. There is no reason behind maintaining a system of classification and exclusion if: a) the very people they are trying to shield are willing to access and view the materials elsewhere; and b) are able to find them from global sources. If our government-controlled boards are unable to keep the best and majority interests of the consumers in mind, then the system is a failure and everything they rule on is potentially incorrectly excluded.

It's best summed up within the issue of our lack of R18+ ratings in Australia, because our classification board is so mindset on the idea that video games are for kids and kids alone.

 

[crudus]

They did? I thought it was a total failure...the odds of the balloons reaching an important part of the US at random were miniscule.

However, that sort of general thing does occur, and censorship is called for.

After WW2, the Allies went to extreme lengths to stamp out any vestiges of Nazi ideology. Nazi symbols are still banned in Germany...an album by KISS had to get a new cover, because the "SS" of KISS was written in a somewhat Schutzstaffel font. An extreme example, but despite all that, Nazism refused to die down, and people are legitimately afraid of it.

I think I read this about a year ago. From what I remember Japan launched like 100s or 1000s of balloons at the US. With the hope of destroying things. They first sent out test balloons. They watched the US' media to see how successful they were. Since there was nothing in the media the plan was deemed a failure. In actuality a few dozen or so arrived at the US. The US figured out what they were for and figured out they had no defense against it. They then did a total media black out on the balloons. That is how I understand it. I haven't read anything about it in a year and can't find where I read this from originally.

Not sure how accurate that is...

The comics censoring created the Comics code, which went on to make Archie comics the ONLY thing to really follow those guidelines.

The problem with censorship, even if it's only temporary, is that it has a way of being the justification for almost any bad behavior...

It is <a href=http://www.thespeedingbullet.com/atomic.html>quite accurate.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

Nope, never acceptable. Either anything goes or nothing does.

 

[Blue_vision]

The idea of taking something out of a piece of media because you disagree with or dislike what it's saying is just stupid. Nothing is gained. If there's something really bad (i.e. Mein Kampf,) then it's much better to get it out there so that people can go "wow, that's really bad, it's a good thing that's not a part of society." Having public conversation about these kind of issues is important, and we can't have some body, whether it be a government, publisher, or social body as a whole saying "you shouldn't read this."

If there's really an issue with it, you should read it so you can learn from it. If there's going to be any form of censorship, it'd just be a well-documented but informal listing of "x is good, x is bad (and here are the reasons." But taking something out completely, again, accomplishes nothing.

 

[Random Encounter]

Censorship has been taken too far by the government. Especially here in Australia.

I mean, don't I have the right to choose what I can and can't handle in what's considered "offensive"?

 

[parks_86]

O

Censorship is important to any level of media, not just video games, because there are some truly messed up things that would otherwise be readily available to everyone. I know it's a thrashed example, but look at Rapelay.

However, I can think of two examples of how censorship doesn't work in the modern age. One is thanks to the internet and the huge-scale globalisation it brought with it. The other is the censorship associations.

The two are like chalk and cheese - the internet continually changes and diversifies, finding new methods and bridging gaps faster than anything ever before while our censorship boards seem to be left behind in a pathetically unchanging, unshifting and uncompromising mindset that simply means that the needs and wants of the public it is meant to be serving are not met.

If our various global censorship boards are unable to keep up, not just with their respective consumer base but with the world now as well, then censorship as a whole has missed the point. There is no reason behind maintaining a system of classification and exclusion if: a) the very people they are trying to shield are willing to access and view the materials elsewhere; and b) are able to find them from global sources. If our government-controlled boards are unable to keep the best and majority interests of the consumers in mind, then the system is a failure and everything they rule on is potentially incorrectly excluded.

It's best summed up within the issue of our lack of R18+ ratings in Australia, because our classification board is so mindset on the idea that video games are for kids and kids alone.

I don't think your example of legally keeping RapeLay from the public is a good idea at all.
Simple thing is, if people don't like it they won't play it. If they do like it, then what's the problem?

Oooooh, noooo, that wasn't my point at all. I was simply saying that without levels of censorship that game would actually still be available to many countries and many age levels. I wasn't saying it should stay, I'm saying it's one example of how censorship should work. Of course if you think about it a little more then it kind of didn't work, since it was available for whatever length of time it was around.

 

[Blindswordmaster]

For the record: if this gets me suspended I called it.

Um... why would you get suspended for that post?

The Escapist isn't full of crazy power-hungry mods who hate free thought and expression. I think your perception of authority has been severely warped for you to expect to be suspended for that post. Even if you were suspended, it would be due to a large number of reports, not due to a moderator judgment call. You really should read the memos from the mod team.

What i meant was that if I linked the aforementioned passage from the Diary of Anne Frank then I would most likely get suspended.

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Don't kill me but I'd rather keep the nudity censors on for some cases, maybe as an option? Protecting the children isn't that bad of an idea, just ask me and you'll see how fucked up I am >.>

However yes the censorship of the N-word was unnecessary and to be frank stupid.

but you just censored yourself.

 

[Doctor What]

I like to write like real life. I swear in real life, I swear in my writing. I'm crude, rude and smug. I'm overbearing with my superiority complex and snarkiness. So that's how I write.

Thankfully, my writing teacher likes this and tells me to write like this without fear of censorship.

I still have to worry about everybody else, but I've never had any of my work censored.

But yeah, it's just idiotic how much stuff gets censored these days.

 

[Nouw]

Don't kill me but I'd rather keep the nudity censors on for some cases, maybe as an option? Protecting the children isn't that bad of an idea, just ask me and you'll see how fucked up I am >.>

However yes the censorship of the N-word was unnecessary and to be frank stupid.

but you just censored yourself.

I would think that if I did say it someone would be offended. I am not literature or a classic book and that is why.

 

[FalloutJack]

Ah, fuck censoreship. The FCC doesn't know what it's doing half the time, a fact proven when they had their license to practice removed.

 

[conflictofinterests]

Censorship is dumb, but it's OUR dumb. It's the way things are done in many cultures, and as a tool for the maintenance of cultures and the status quo, and (remember, this comes from an anthropology major) cannot in good faith be wholesale abandoned, should there come a time where it IS necessary to solve a problem.

 

[Eumersian]

Well the need for things to be FCC clean does mean that I have to listen to lyrics over and over again for songs that my college's radio station got for promos?

Really, censorship doesn't matter to me that much. I feel like the only thing it can possibly do positively is keep us from being over-sexualized potty-mouths. But if we did become that, it wouldn't be that much of a problem for me either.

OK, let me try again. It should be up to the person. If a person doesn't want to deal with the sex, etc., then they can skip the media the deal with it.

EDIT: Ever seen any of those pre-code Hollywood films? Some of them are pretty good. They didn't need to institute the code for any other reason than to make movies "less offensive".

So government censorship is pointless, in my opinion.

 

[Bon_Clay]

Censorship of the form people complain about has no place in free society. The government has no place forcing it on people, and people have no right to try and force it on other people. The protecting the children angle is bullshit, its up to parents to raise their children and decide what they have access to. Adults should have the right to decide for themselves what they watch and read, if you have to go out of your way to get access to something then there is no one to blame but yourself if you are offended.

And since when is being "offended" such a fucking big deal? I have no respect for anyone who thinks being offended by something is some horrible torture to them worthy of alerting the news media, or for anyone who babies these people and dignifies their melodramatic crap.

To quote C. S. Lewis: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Don't kill me but I'd rather keep the nudity censors on for some cases, maybe as an option? Protecting the children isn't that bad of an idea, just ask me and you'll see how fucked up I am >.>

However yes the censorship of the N-word was unnecessary and to be frank stupid.

but you just censored yourself.

I would think that if I did say it someone would be offended. I am not literature or a classic book and that is why.

I've never understood how someone can be offended by a word alone. You're not calling anyone that, you're just making reference to the word ******.

 

[Nouw]

Don't kill me but I'd rather keep the nudity censors on for some cases, maybe as an option? Protecting the children isn't that bad of an idea, just ask me and you'll see how fucked up I am >.>

However yes the censorship of the N-word was unnecessary and to be frank stupid.

but you just censored yourself.

I would think that if I did say it someone would be offended. I am not literature or a classic book and that is why.

I've never understood how someone can be offended by a word alone. You're not calling anyone that, you're just making reference to the word ******.

I don't necessarily understand it too but I do understand that I should be considerate of other people's feelings. You know?

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Don't kill me but I'd rather keep the nudity censors on for some cases, maybe as an option? Protecting the children isn't that bad of an idea, just ask me and you'll see how fucked up I am >.>

However yes the censorship of the N-word was unnecessary and to be frank stupid.

but you just censored yourself.

I would think that if I did say it someone would be offended. I am not literature or a classic book and that is why.

I've never understood how someone can be offended by a word alone. You're not calling anyone that, you're just making reference to the word ******.

I don't necessarily understand it too but I do understand that I should be considerate of other people's feelings. You know?

That I completely understand, but I'm not going to say "the n word" when discussing the term, I'm just going to say ******.

 

[Nouw]

Don't kill me but I'd rather keep the nudity censors on for some cases, maybe as an option? Protecting the children isn't that bad of an idea, just ask me and you'll see how fucked up I am >.>

However yes the censorship of the N-word was unnecessary and to be frank stupid.

but you just censored yourself.

I would think that if I did say it someone would be offended. I am not literature or a classic book and that is why.

I've never understood how someone can be offended by a word alone. You're not calling anyone that, you're just making reference to the word ******.

I don't necessarily understand it too but I do understand that I should be considerate of other people's feelings. You know?

That I completely understand, but I'm not going to say "the n word" when discussing the term, I'm just going to say ******.

Oh of course when I'm around with friends I'd just blurt out '******' (as tempting it is to do in public, people around me would stereotype me so quickly in a negative manner that negative energy may cause my head to explode).

Over here however everyone can see it if they want to >.>