is is ever really necessary? and where do you draw the line. personally i object to images of mutilated bodies, but should that be censored or should i just be able to guess that typing ouch into google won't be pretty?
It depends on the access point. One of the big questions in obscenity rulings, for instance, is how accessible the material is, and how easy it is to avoid it. Material you have to go out of your way to access is rarely considered obscene (no matter what it is). If I have to go to a website to see smut, it's not obscene. If it's played on broadcast TV, it may very well be. Context is king.Agayek said:In my opinion, censorship is never a good thing. If something is offensive to you, don't watch it. If you don't want your children to see something, tell them what it is and why you don't want them seeing it. It's as simple as that. Limiting available information, no matter its form, is a crime against humanity in my book.
Uh... DCMA has nothing to do with obscenity censorship, it's about copyrights. Those suits are mostly about the atheists using copyrighted material without either consent or fair use protection. I'm not agreeing with the creationists, but the law is the law. But, beyond that, who gets to define what is truly offensive? What's offensive to you might be something I find perfectly acceptable. If you mean it has to be something everyone finds offensive, nothing's off limits. If you ban anything a majority of people find offensive, you have troubles there, too.Cid SilverWing said:Censor only what is truly offensive.
But that won't happen because censorship is perpetually abused, particularly by creationist heretics to silence scientific atheists on YouTube with false DMCA claims to further their own misinformed religious doctrines.
I completely agree, and you have my support. All rights (free speech, free association, free religion) are restrained by the harm that can be done to others. Your right to religious practice doesn't allow you to commit statutory rape. Your right to free association doesn't give you the right to lynch someone. Your right to free speech doesn't give you the right to slander someone.cleverlymadeup said:well see for all those saying "freedom of speech" their is a big issue with that. see i could easily go around saying " is a pedophile and likes to do funny things with young boys" and when they try to stop me claim freedom of speech and in the process ruin the person's reputation because no one will remember that i had to retract the statement just that the statement was made
so yes censorship can be a good thing