Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-21-2010

[andrewducker]

• Oakland green lights industrial marijuana cultivation
  (tags: marijuana drugs)
• Why not censorship?
  (tags: freespeech censorship)
• I didn't know Conversation had rules!
  (tags: conversation communication psychology aspergers)
• The Gender Stereotype Game
  (tags: gender stereotypes)
• Scots drink a quarter more alcohol than other Brits
  (tags: alcohol uk scotland)
• A screenwriter has a very strange encounter, and writes the best blog post I've read this year.
  (tags: writing crime reality)
• Entanglement - a simple, but addictive, HTML5 game
  (tags: games javascript puzzles)
• Sharp launches world first Android netbook -kinda.
  (tags: Telephone android)
• PressThink: Objectivity as a Form of Persuasion.
  (tags: journalism ethics media bias news)
• Scottish rents rise as home buyers opt to rent
  The best performing city in Scotland is Edinburgh, where the average rent for a one bed flat in the city now stands at £520 - a rise of 3.2% compared with last year - while the average cost for a two-bedroom flat has risen 4.6% to £680.
  (tags: scotland housing)
• The differences between Civil Partnerships and Marriage.
  (tags: marriage law)
• SNP to outlaw smutty innuendo. They can fuck off.
  (tags: sex freespeech scotland EpicFail)
• Sony files patent on using stereoscopic lenses to allow two people to share a screen without seeing what the other does.
  (tags: 3d technology games)
• The former head of MI5 says that the invasion of Iraq substantially increased the terrorist threat to the UK.
  (tags: terrorism uk war iraq)

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Your definition of censorship is so broad in the above that it would apply to cleaning off graffiti from the side of your house. I don't think that anyone would find such a broad definition useful or desirable.

The difference is that the blog is a privately held entity. They can (and should) choose what can go there and what is unacceptable; they're not censoring someone when they remove an animated goatse gif or ban a troll from the comments. Mr. Gif and Mr. Troll are perfectly free to find their own venues to publish, elsewhere.

Censorship isn't someone refusing to publish a work, but rather someone being forbidden to publish a work.

-- Steve also sees the above making ejecting trespassers or lodging noise complaints into forms of censorship, which stretches the term into meaninglessness.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

They're deleting content from their blog. People who have fulfilled the criteria to post a comment, namely register, are stopped from doing what other people who have done the same, are doing. Posting a comment. Even more so: blogs often state that they will not tolerate racism etc. They forbid people to post certain comments. How is this not censorship?

They limit other people's free speech in order to protect their own. This is generally speaking seen as perfectly ok. You seem to think it is. So what's the difference with society in general that makes this ok, and other forms not? Why does it matter if it's a privately held entity? Don't we all own society together?

If we do, all the people who make up society can together decide what to ban or not to ban. We already have in the form of libel and slander laws. We don't have a problem with that. We could do similar things with other categories if we can more or less agree on doing so.

If they decide to ban something, Mr. Gif and Mr. Troll always have a choice. Don't do the crime, or do the time if you get caught. This is what happens at any blog as well. Either they don't post because they know their comment will be removed, or they post and it gets removed.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Even more so: blogs often state that they will not tolerate racism etc. [...] How is this not censorship?

Well, it is, of course. And so what? Where did you get the idea that all censorship is bad?

[usmu.livejournal.com]

That's the whole thing. I don't think that. And that's what I'm arguing. People on the one hand condone certain kinds of censorship while claiming to be hard line free speech advocates. So if the one is ok and the other not, they need to explain how they can clain to be so.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

*sigh* That word, you keep using it. I do not think it means what you think it means.

-- Steve deleted a couple of tries at explaining, and one of summing up, before deciding to save what ravelled wits remaining to him.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

Here:s what I'm working with

Censorship: the limiting of free speech.
Free speech: the expression of ideas through any form of communication by a given entity.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

By your definition, you would be censoring me should I write "dirty, dirty" with my fingertip in the dust on your car and you wash your car at any time thereafter. Your definitions are excessively broad, to the point of becoming meaningless.

-- Steve can define "food" as "stuff you put in your mouth", but that doesn't make pens, air, thumbs, cigarettes, and genitalia provide sustenance.

[usmu.livejournal.com]

For anything to be a proper definition it needs to meet two criteria:
1) it must include everything of the thing you want to define
2) it must exclude everything not of the thing you want to define

Your definition of food does not meet the second criteria. I don't think my definition of censorship has a similar problem.

As to it being broad... Censorship is not a large single homogeneous entity, but a building made up of bricks. Person vs person - Group vs. person - Group vs. Group, but to name a few. Some bricks that are very bad, some mildly so and some pretty much harmless. For me the point is recognizing that, describing the different kinds of censorship and discussing whether they serve a genuine purpose ar not. A