| Responsible Censorship... |
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| Written by Andrew | |
| Thursday, 05 October 2006 21:49 | |
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Yeah. Mainly, I'm writing this article because my school (its governed by 'the borough') is getting excessively ridiculous with its system and policy of banning websites. Well, moreso, its lack of policy. It just bans.
First of all, I will take great delight in referring to the controlling body behind the boroughwide filtering system "Websense" as 'The Borough'. Fittingly, it has a very sinister edge to it. It sounds like a mafia ring, or some kind of crime syndicate. Which I think is great. Next up, what is censorship? Why censor things? Why at all? What is...responsible censorship? Stolen straight from wikipedia for want of a better definition, censorship is listed as; "... the control of speech and other forms of human expression. In many (but not all) cases, it is exercised by governing bodies. The visible motive of censorship is often to stabilize or improve the society that the government would have control over. It is most commonly applied to acts that occur in public circumstances, and most formally involves the suppression of ideas by criminalizing or regulating expression. Furthermore, discussion of censorship often includes less formal means of controlling perceptions by excluding various ideas from mass communication. What is censored may range from specific words to entire concepts and it may be influenced by value systems. Sanitization (removal) and whitewashing are almost interchangeable terms that refer to a particular form of censorship via omission, which seeks to "clean up" the portrayal of particular issues and/or facts that are already known, but that may be in conflict with the point of view of the censor. Some may consider extreme political correctness to be related, as a socially-imposed (rather than governmentally imposed) type of restriction, which, if taken to extremes, may qualify as self-censorship..." Personally, I'm not 100% happy with WikiPedia's definition, as it does put a rather evil-empire esque spin on the issue. Which may be deserved. Essentially, WebSense seeks to filter 'restricted' (as the software says when it blocks a page) websites. As I understand it, the process by which a site can be blocked is twofold, either by a user submission (assumedly a teacher, or member of staff working for 'the borough'), or automatically. Keyword filtering for 'rude' (oh yea, I can write a 'taboo' article too now :p) words, and explicit materials, as well as violent pictures. Understandably, because in a school environment, the school is essentially responsible, should little johnny happen to see a semi-naked lady on the intahweb. However, is it a problem inherent with automatic filtering and keyword blocking. No matter how advanced the AI routines and code is, computers are, will be, and are doomed to be, stupid. They cannot understand the concept of context. How suddenly, in one instance, a word is rude and taboo (i really should write that article), yet in another, it isnt. So lets take a responsible approach to censorship. Lets just ban everything instead. Better yet, lets not review our list or banned websites, or, for the mainpart (barring where websites are submitted for filtering) actually have any human input to check the websites. I am happy, in the United Kingdom, the BBFC do personally review films, and by human, fair vote, decide whether a film is suitable. Actually I take it back, I'm not 100% lah-de-dah happy that a certain few can make decisions for the whole. But they do, and in fairness, I believe they do a good job. The thing is, the BBFC has human people reviewing them. Intelligent humans. I'm not attempting to bad-mouth computers here, I love the things. But the BBFC is responsibly censoring appropriate materials for the general public (as a general rule of thumb, if the BBFC ban a film by not approving it, one has to raise a question of why the average citizen would actually want to watch such a thing). I am not happy that 'the borough' as presented to the end user is nothing more than a stupid machine, making decisions on right and wrong that it frankly doesn't understand. I am not happy that various younger years have found it difficult to research topics, such as Slavery in the 1700-1800s. I am not happy portions (and I would like to add, 'appropriate' portions) of this website are blocked. I am not happy that google image search is blocked. I am most certainly not happy that if this continues, the variety and diversity that makes up the internet will be competely void at lacking, thanks to the borough (at schools). Oh sorry, you cant compare two sources. One is deemed innapropriate. I am making wildly unsupported suggestions as to what may happen, with only my tainted experience to go by. But the very fact it is possible and that I am making these suggestions scares me enough. So please, my dear friends at 'the borough'; responsibly filter sites. Check the material. Check the keyword terms aren't too generic. It happen within the remainder of my websense-tainted education, but please...be responsible with that big banstick you have; knowledge is power with great power comes great responsibility Admittedly cheesy lines to choose, but they needed adding. |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 13 October 2006 22:44 ) |