Sirius's Sunday Supplement....:)

[sirius]

Its that time again for what may be a 'heated debate' , lol. Again, Its only a mild one, hahaha.

This sundays supplement is regarding Freedoms, and the freedom of the internet, whats happening and what you think about it (hopefully).

With our heritage and hard faught for freedoms being eroded away every week by stealth, whether it be via small 'insignificant' bills in parliament we never get to know about, sweeping reactions to 'media' outcrys that bring about restrictions, the government and police 'indirectly' censoring what we can and cant see and hear or the EU powers and laws which we now HAVE to follow as being a part of the EU, the pace of the loss of freedom we are 'supposedly' famous and jubilant about is certainly stepping up at an alarming rate.

This may be due to pathetic attempts to restore public confidence about 'terrorist' attacks, but nethertheless, with freedoms of speech no longer being allowed due to the 'politically correct' establishment and reactionalist minority groups, changes in the law to be arrested for 'thought' crimes and crimes you 'may commit in the future', the right of trial by Jury (as apposed to trials by biased 'appointed bodies') being abolished and the assumption of 'innocent until proven guilty' soon going to be gone, we are sleepwalking into a police and establishment driven state where we have no rights anymore.

The government is also further and further snooping into private matters which are not of thier concern, allowing information to be collected upon us, email content to be analysed (yes that means you too, lol) deatils of bank accounts and thier contents and logging and prying into a whole other stash of 'private' affairs is helping to create a 'controlled' country that is beyond 'big brother' in concept.

This is happening aside from 'terrorism' too. In my opinion our liberty and freedom is a defining feature thats been faught hard for and something which sets us apart from the terrorists and must be maintained - if we unnecessarily take away our civil liberties and human rights, then the terrorists will have won.

The last bastion of 'freedom' which we have enabled - "The Internet" - is renouned for being an uncontrollable and uncensored media utility that is 'problematic' to say the least to government and authorities who strive to stifle content, debates, expressions of opinions and documents which we are not supposedly to know about - even by introducing things 'in our best interest' to gain public acceptance. However, is the internet unregulated? Thats always the presumtion, however the reality is a different story.

In a study of 10 ISP's in the UK, ALL 10 stated that they did block access to content which 'may' be deemed 'illegal' or inflamatory and publications which may cause 'distress', 'anxiety' and 'offence' to some 'subscribers'.

(the following is an extract from 'netfreedom' news)

ISPs regulate their customers with Terms and Conditions policies which do not require any of the formal checks and balances of conventional legal processes. These internal policies are commercial agreements between individuals and private organisations and there is little customers can do but comply. Peter o'Tool explained: "The government and police don't want to censor. They'd have to adhere to regulations, protocols and court orders. This way they don't have to do it." He added: "The view of the police is that they want ISPs to do the dirty work for them."


As Internet Freedom founder Chris Ellison explained, Scotland Yard has managed to force ISPs to achieve what the Police alone could not: "the censorship of Internet material without what they see as the inconvenience of courts, the unreliability of juries, or the complication of constructing a case."

There is no formal accountability in the process. Ellison added: "For too long the government-backed organisations like the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) have operated behind closed doors and without constitutional balances on restrictions of freedom of speech." It certainly seems that censorship in Britain operates silently with material being blocked or removed by ISPs without Net users ever being informed. For those who are censored there is no right of appeal. Once seen as censorship-proof, as far as UK users are concerned the Net is becoming one of the most censored media of all.


What are your opinions on these facts/claims?

Cheerio

Sirius.

[OldskoolDazed (al)]

Originally Posted by sirius

Its that time again for what may be a 'heated debate' , lol. Again, Its only a mild one, hahaha.

This sundays supplement is regarding Freedoms, and the freedom of the internet, whats happening and what you think about it (hopefully).

With our heritage and hard faught for freedoms being eroded away every week by stealth, whether it be via small 'insignificant' bills in parliament we never get to know about, sweeping reactions to 'media' outcrys that bring about restrictions, the government and police 'indirectly' censoring what we can and cant see and hear or the EU powers and laws which we now HAVE to follow as being a part of the EU, the pace of the loss of freedom we are 'supposedly' famous and jubilant about is certainly stepping up at an alarming rate.

This may be due to pathetic attempts to restore public confidence about 'terrorist' attacks, but nethertheless, with freedoms of speech no longer being allowed due to the 'politically correct' establishment and reactionalist minority groups, changes in the law to be arrested for 'thought' crimes and crimes you 'may commit in the future', the right of trial by Jury (as apposed to trials by biased 'appointed bodies') being abolished and the assumption of 'innocent until proven guilty' soon going to be gone, we are sleepwalking into a police and establishment driven state where we have no rights anymore.

The government is also further and further snooping into private matters which are not of thier concern, allowing information to be collected upon us, email content to be analysed (yes that means you too, lol) deatils of bank accounts and thier contents and logging and prying into a whole other stash of 'private' affairs is helping to create a 'controlled' country that is beyond 'big brother' in concept.

This is happening aside from 'terrorism' too. In my opinion our liberty and freedom is a defining feature thats been faught hard for and something which sets us apart from the terrorists and must be maintained - if we unnecessarily take away our civil liberties and human rights, then the terrorists will have won.

The last bastion of 'freedom' which we have enabled - "The Internet" - is renouned for being an uncontrollable and uncensored media utility that is 'problematic' to say the least to government and authorities who strive to stifle content, debates, expressions of opinions and documents which we are not supposedly to know about - even by introducing things 'in our best interest' to gain public acceptance. However, is the internet unregulated? Thats always the presumtion, however the reality is a different story.

In a study of 10 ISP's in the UK, ALL 10 stated that they did block access to content which 'may' be deemed 'illegal' or inflamatory and publications which may cause 'distress', 'anxiety' and 'offence' to some 'subscribers'.

(the following is an extract from 'netfreedom' news)

ISPs regulate their customers with Terms and Conditions policies which do not require any of the formal checks and balances of conventional legal processes. These internal policies are commercial agreements between individuals and private organisations and there is little customers can do but comply. Peter o'Tool explained: "The government and police don't want to censor. They'd have to adhere to regulations, protocols and court orders. This way they don't have to do it." He added: "The view of the police is that they want ISPs to do the dirty work for them."


As Internet Freedom founder Chris Ellison explained, Scotland Yard has managed to force ISPs to achieve what the Police alone could not: "the censorship of Internet material without what they see as the inconvenience of courts, the unreliability of juries, or the complication of constructing a case."

There is no formal accountability in the process. Ellison added: "For too long the government-backed organisations like the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) have operated behind closed doors and without constitutional balances on restrictions of freedom of speech." It certainly seems that censorship in Britain operates silently with material being blocked or removed by ISPs without Net users ever being informed. For those who are censored there is no right of appeal. Once seen as censorship-proof, as far as UK users are concerned the Net is becoming one of the most censored media of all.


What are your opinions on these facts/claims?

Cheerio

Sirius.

lol paul is this paranoia cause of ya porn collection

[northern minx]

its a sunday for cryin out loud! after last nite!

no way my head cud even entain or digest wot uve written never mind comment on it!

[sirius]

Yeah, that Cathy Barry and the collection of Backseat Bangers is preying on my mind a bit, hahaha.

Nah, I feel its a rather serious matter, and just becuase we have been 'ground down' over the years and we are 'too busy' etc shouldnt mean we lose sight of important and fundamental rights we should have and ones which have been faught for where many lives have been lost and give them away on a whim or allow them to be taken from us without our concent.


You cheeky scamp Al, lol. .


See ya

Sirius.

ps. @ northern minx!! I know its a long one for the mashed heads.......lol.....but I left it late so peeps can hopefully chew the cud during a hectic workday peeps have sufing on here whilst at work tomorrow! hahaha.

[blue jammer]

The company I work for has just introduced a new scheme called 'Blue Pumpkin' a monitoring service ran from Belgium of all places! which lets a centre over there have access to see what we are doing here with our phones.

If for any reason you aren't in 'ready' you have to enter a reason code for being in 'not ready' else they'll phone you up and say "your in not ready, what are you doing?" hah!

I did this on purpose to wind them up, saying "ahh sorry, the 'activity' button on my phone sticks a lot, so I can't tell if I have made a selection or not" which flumoxed them completely, and the girl from their centre said "ummm right, I'll get back to you on that" that was 2 days ago

--

There's a lot of port blocking going on with *some* ISP's, which they do in order to cut down the amount of file sharing with some of the well known peer-to-peer file sharing programs.

Of course there are ways round *most* things that get blocked, it's just like copy protection on CD's/DVD's/software, people will try and include all manner of devices to stop you copying, but you know minutes after an official release there will be a cracked version around for all to grab, one cracking team boasted in their .nfo file "released 09:00 21.09.03, cracked 09:07 21.09.03"

Back to the point though, What exactly is this content that is deemed 'illegal' ?

It's not very clear is it, I mean certain content I think should be blocked, filtered and whatnot. I very much doubt anyone here would like to see the free reign on child porn online? You'd want that blocked straight off, I know I would.

I remember a few of the very first things I searched for when I first went online back in 1995 (after finding a pay porn site where a woman would do things I asked via a little chat window, fuck me that opened my eyes, until I went to Amsterdam in 2002 and well, that's another story ) were, how to make bombs (I wanted to know just out of curiosity) and video hacking and copying methods, which up until I got online, was really hard to find any information on, short of ringing up repair centre's and asking to speak to techie's...

I think the government doesn't like it when we can access anything we like, I'm sure they'd try and levy some kind of Internet Tax on anything they could to make it harder for people to access music and movies and the likes, that they currently can, for free.

Reminds me of a KRS-One lyric:

The police department
Is like a crew
It does whatever they want to do
In society you have illegal and legal
We need both to make things equal
So legal is tobacco
Illegal is speed
Legal is aspirin
Illegal is weed
Crack is illegal, cause they cannot stop ya
But cocaine is legal if its owned by a doctor
Everything you do in private is illegal
Everything's legal if they government can see you

[doolz]

Originally Posted by blue jammer

The company I work for has just introduced a new scheme called 'Blue Pumpkin' a monitoring service ran from Belgium of all places! which lets a centre over there have access to see what we are doing here with our phones.

If for any reason you aren't in 'ready' you have to enter a reason code for being in 'not ready' else they'll phone you up and say "your in not ready, what are you doing?" hah!

I did this on purpose to wind them up, saying "ahh sorry, the 'activity' button on my phone sticks a lot, so I can't tell if I have made a selection or not" which flumoxed them completely, and the girl from their centre said "ummm right, I'll get back to you on that" that was 2 days ago

--

There's a lot of port blocking going on with *some* ISP's, which they do in order to cut down the amount of file sharing with some of the well known peer-to-peer file sharing programs.

Of course there are ways round *most* things that get blocked, it's just like copy protection on CD's/DVD's/software, people will try and include all manner of devices to stop you copying, but you know minutes after an official release there will be a cracked version around for all to grab, one cracking team boasted in their .nfo file "released 09:00 21.09.03, cracked 09:07 21.09.03"

Back to the point though, What exactly is this content that is deemed 'illegal' ?

It's not very clear is it, I mean certain content I think should be blocked, filtered and whatnot. I very much doubt anyone here would like to see the free reign on child porn online? You'd want that blocked straight off, I know I would.

I remember a few of the very first things I searched for when I first went online back in 1995 (after finding a pay porn site where a woman would do things I asked via a little chat window, fuck me that opened my eyes, until I went to Amsterdam in 2002 and well, that's another story ) were, how to make bombs (I wanted to know just out of curiosity) and video hacking and copying methods, which up until I got online, was really hard to find any information on, short of ringing up repair centre's and asking to speak to techie's...

I think the government doesn't like it when we can access anything we like, I'm sure they'd try and levy some kind of Internet Tax on anything they could to make it harder for people to access music and movies and the likes, that they currently can, for free.

Reminds me of a KRS-One lyric:

cocaine business controls america krs1 come to start some hysteria

[sirius]

Yeah, Bluejammer. I wholeheartedly agree that filters of child abuse in any form should be heavily clamped down on and known ports of this activity blocked at the source of the connection.

However, what disturbs me is denial of access to other 'normal' things (like which you mentioned) that may be 'deemed' illegal or 'immoral' or 'shocking' and tried tried to be swept under the carpet for 'neatness' of society and whatever political and propoganda agenda is currently sweeping the nations decisionmakers.

Things are reigning in real tight, and we seem to be just accepting it as either 'progress', 'nothing we can do about it' or have been brainwashed into thinking it will somehow magically solve the worlds troubles by keeping tabs on us all and knowing what we are all doing, which political stances we have, sexuality preferences, religious preferences, status and wealth, also the fututre posibility of genetics and probable implications that genetic 'forsights' as well as general 'probing' will bring for discrimination in the future. You think it wont happen like that? Think again.

Its just like identity cards (which will carry this information) which another topic that I am fully against. There was talk about them being 'voluntary' - and therefore not legislted as a 'necessity' by law to keep civil libertarians from hampering the concept.....however, what will happen is that banks, insurance, medical care and general 'everyday' life processes will (by thier own terms and conditions to protect themselves) 'require' you produce one to sort anything out.....so therefore life will become impossible without one and the government hasnt had to get thier fingers dirty.

Back on the internet topic, as thats just reminded me to whats on the original post, WHO is it that judges what is acceptable and unacceptable material for people to access?
Its obvious there is no argument about child abuse related sites, however, general content like access to renouned 'warez' rings and newsgroups or 'extremist' websites which may have a particular bias of some sort are being filtered out by organisations which have no authority by law to do so and we are forced to accept this fact in a 'licence agreement' which you HAVE to accept to be able to get on the internet in the first place!. Surely the legality of a website or activity is for the courts to decide and not ISP's on our behalf!. If somebody wants to look at warez sites, 'adult' pornography sites with severe fetish tendancies, to look at bombmaking equipment or wants to form a political party against poeple with blue eyes making decisions or whatever other wacko scenario is out there, then in a free society that is what we should be able to do.

lol. Its illegal to put fake 50p's size washers in pay heating machinery or whatever - but it should be a right to a choice to do that, and if you are found guilty, delt with as such! Same applies for other things in general. I really feel that we need to be more vigilant on the impact that whim decisions will bring, even if its not in whats left of our lifetime. Its like the mentality of some people regarding fossil fuels and materials - "Well, Ill be dead and burried before oil and aluminium ore runs out, stick that heater up and lets waste some more aluminium too".....as though thats gonna be of comfort to future generations!.

It seems funny to me how in one hand people are jubilant about the removal of a police state and 'regime' of any suppressed country, yet in the other hand, we are turning ourselves into one!!!
The only difference is in perception and what we are 'informed' and our own 'above everyone else in the world' attitude as to what is deemed acceptable 'suppression' for the 'apparent' benifit of us all - ie 'in our best interest' - whether we say so or not!.



Anyway, theres not many biting this week!. I got my fishing rod out for nowt Perhaps Id better find a more controversial topic next time! hahahaa.


Cheerio

Sirius.