Archiv:2010/Censorship Arguliner
Tasks for German Pirates (in German, actual content after TOC):
Die Zensurdebatte, die wir in Deutschland bereits teilweise gewonnen haben, fängt in anderen Staaten erst an. Um die Piratenparteien in den anderen Ländern zu unterstützen, brauchen wir einen sauberen Arguliner. Dieser bedarf sowohl
allgemeine Argumenten, z.B.
- Gefahren der Zensur
- Kollateralschaden
- entkräftete Argumente der Gegenseite bzw. Strategieren dagegen (z.B. Botschaften von "KiPo-Schurkenstaaten" anschreiben)
als auch
Fakten und Ereignisse, z.B.
- Falsch interpretierte Zahlen (s. Kriminalstatistik)
- Neue und zum Teil unerwartete Verbündete (MOGIS, Carechild)
- Studien (z.B. Phishing vs. KiPo löschen)
- Aussagen von offizieller Seite (z.B. Schwedische Polizei)
Die Argumente müssen sauber und stichhaltig sein. Nachweise sollten wo nötig an keiner Stelle fehlen! Schauen wir doch mal, ob unsere Wiki hier was tolles zustande bringt ;)
Wichtig ist, dass all diese Sachverhalte von hier ab in Englisch beschrieben werden, damit sie auch von allen Piratenparteien verwendet werden können. Ich setze ein paar Beispiele ein.
Kurzer Einwurf: Wer übersetzt den Arguliner der Piratenpartei Deutschland gegen Internetsperren auf Englisch ? Dieser wäre für diverse Länder, unter anderem England und Australien, Gold wert. --Slash 14:33, 28. Apr. 2010 (CEST)
- gibt es jetzt auf Censilia_Arguliner --Twix 19:16, 21. Sep. 2010 (CEST)
Intent of this page
A lot of governments want to introduce some kind of censorship. That's something we have to fight at all costs, because it can virtually cripple entire democracies. Unfortunately our opponents are clever and pick their "battlefield" wisely. It's plain easier to introduce censorship if you pretend to save children from abuse. You can claim to do something good by just "blocking" bad sites. No one can argue with that, right? But we have to. It doesn't matter if they just want to do something good and use wrong methods or if they want to establish censorship with intent.
It isn't easy to contradict someone, who claims he wants to save children from abuse by blocking child porn on the internet. This gives us a hard stand, because at first this sounds like a good thing to most people. But the methods can and will be abused to filter other inconvenient content from the web. We have to tell people, what this will cause, what dangers are caused by censorship and there's no way that only "bad" sites get blocked. We have to tell them, that maybe blocking child pornography isn't the true intent of these laws. And we have to tell them, that this is a danger to our society. We have to show them better ways to deal with the issue. We have to tell them, that we are not pro-child porn but anti-censorship.
That's an awful lot of information to communicate. And that's the reason, why they picked the entire "child porn"-topic. It's going to be complicated. Fortunately, we have the upper hand in good arguments! And also some real hard-hitters like the pishing-argument.
Generic arguments against censorship
Get to know what you are fighting against! Censorship is an insanely powerful tool for every kind of government that relies on oppression. It is vital for them to control the information their citizens can access to prevent uprisings. By providing information that makes people think and behave the way one likes and keeping information away from them that makes one look bad, one can control entire societies. But such a society isn't free at all. It doesn't feature free citizens who can develop their own point of view. That's the reason why the media is considered the fourth pillar of democracy among the executive, judiciary and legislature institutions. It's essential that citizens have free access to any information so they can form their own, independent point of view.
To provide this information, we need a free and independent press, the possibility to communicate free and anonymously and a pluralism of opinions. Even if the last one means, that extremists can also preach their methods and points of views. A well-educated society can withstand this pretty easily and deal with those who fall for it without repressive methods. It doesn't need censorship which denies all the aims named above and threatens common welfare for the good of only few.
Active protection of culprits
Blocking Websits can be a warning signals for actual culprits. When they try to access the page and find it to be blocked, they know that the police might be on their tracks and have all the time they need to get rid of any evidence, even if the police gets noticed about the access attempt. An automatical warning system (for example comparing compromised and non-compromised DNS-Servers) can issue a warning like that in a very short time after the actual blocking. Also, if someone innocent tries to access a blocked page by accident, they might find themselves accused of the consumption of child pornography. And this is a pretty hard punishment itself, even if one is proven not guilty.
International laws
Allegedly it's impossible to fight child sexual abuse cross-country!
- Well, but it is obviously possible to discuss new international laws concerning product piracy and copyright? (e.g. ACTA)
- ... but in the case of child sexual abuse it is not?
Censoring via DNS does not achieve the goal of blocking child pornography
DNS censorship is easy to circumvent by using a different DNS server. Not only "a low percentage" of "experts" are able to so so (as claimed by various politicians), anybody can do it. It's insanely easy, it takes mere seconds. And those who don't know, can get explanations quite easily, for example on Youtube. List of Youtube videos explaining how to circumvent the DNS censorship (german)
- If the censorship can obviously not prevent access to child porn sites, what's its real purpose?
- Since the DNS censorship is ineffective will it be replaced by a more effective technique later? More drastic measures such as blocking port 53 so that alternative DNS servers cannot be reached as easily anymore? Smoothing the way for a Great Firewall of Europe?
False arguments supporting censorship, and how to counter them
Child pornography is a big industry
Child pornography isn't a big industry. It's loose circles of criminals exchanging material that has been already there without any payments being made. It's made by amateurs, no reoccuring molesters whatsoever. And these circles don't exchange that stuff via the internet, because they consider it to be unsafe. They prefer mail, because of the secrecy of correspondence applies to them.
Also see these really good statements from Udo Vetter, a german lawyer and operator of the law blog (german):
- Interview by the newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (german)
- English: Google translation
- Blog entry entitled "The legend of the child porn industry" by Vetter (german)
- English: Google translation
This shows plainly that the censorship plans don't help any child, because there is no "market" to dry out. Only an estimated number of 1% of all predators record their crimes.
Facts about censorship
Study about the effect of notice an takedown procedures
A big advantage in arguing about censorship and child pornograhphy is a study of the university of Cambridge ([1]). It states that banks (unlike police without governmental powers!) only need a few hours to delete Phishing-Sites, but it takes international police forces about a month, to delete a child porn site.
Not only does this show, that "deletion instead of blocking" works, it is a possibility to confront very polemic opponents. Some of the opponets will gain a lot applaus with arguments like "Other countries block child porn sites. Why is our country not capable of that?". You can counter with "How can it be, that banks without government authority are way faster deleting fraud sites, than police forces are deleting child porn?" or further "When it comes to money, noone hesitates. But when it comes to abused children, noone feels responsible. That is what is wrong with our country". You might not get the same amount of applaus without proper strategy, but it will give everyone something to puzzle with, because they only expect you to have technical arguments and not emotionally touching ones.
Important on topic links (content in English)
- MOGiS: German organisation of victims of sexual child-abuse (content in: Deutsch English Español Français Italiano Nederlands Português Română Svenska)