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Censorship versus Freedom in Urgent Evoke
censorship is the absolute enemy of freedom. censorship is a weapon used by corrupt governments, cowardly corporations and conservative extremists to SILENCE dissent, restrict INFORMATION and enforce their 'morals'. simply take a look at the extreme on-going cases of Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and China. even in places with laws protecting FREE SPEECH, the battle is on-going.
the arguments for censorship consists of sheltering people and children from 'inappropriate' media. those are merely a skewed rationale. what is the TRUTH? censorship takes away the RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES of citizens to CHOOSE what is suitable for themselves and their children. censorship is about CONTROL.
the worst is something i call 'pre-emptive tyrannical' censorship; where a special select few choose what is 'suitable' for public viewing. in addition, this type of censorship has NO transparency and NO formal process to appeal.
sound familiar? Urgent Evoke moderators have been engaging in opaque, arbitrary censorship from the very beginning. posts and comments disappear without warning. when they occasionally grace someone with a reason, those given are ill-defined, vacillating and personal. hardly the actions of an ETHICAL organization that claims a focus on freedom and social activism.
those of us that have thought on these issues know what the TRUTH is. Urgent Evoke is still trying to CONTROL every aspect of UE. they seek to constrain the public image of Urgent Evoke to their own vision. using their stealth censorship, they are trying to silence voices of dissent and any material that does not fit with their 'safe, happy family' version of UE.
the real world can be an ugly place, sickened with murder, hatred and greed. this is WHY we are social activists. censorship does not make the bad things go away..
here's a short list of organizations that regularly fight against censorship:
http://www.aclu.org/ - American Civil Liberties Union (USA)
http://www.amnesty.org/ - Amnesty International
http://ccrjustice.org/ - Center for Constitutional Rights (USA)
http://en.rsf.org/ - Reporters Without Borders
http://www.eff.org/ - Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.ncac.org/ - National Coalition Against Censorship (USA)
http://www.fair.org/index.php - Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/ - Index on Censorship (UK)
http://www.chillingeffects.org/ - Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
http://www.thefirstamendment.org/ - The First Amendment Project (USA)
addendum - @Michele Baron has summed up everything i have been trying to say better than i could.
remember, seek the TRUTH.
Views: 294
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Comment by A.V.Koshy on April 24, 2010 at 3:50pm
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well you yourself say its only a small problem then how can they get so het up
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Comment by Iron Helix on April 24, 2010 at 5:18pm
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Not sure if this has been addressed yet, but it's when content starts impinging on the freedom of others then moderation becomes necessary. Examples of this would include slander/libel, overt hate speech, pornography, etc.
If 'freedom' of speech was taken to its full extent, you'd run into a lot of problems. Interesting question though... if someone were to post a picture of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, would Evoke censor it (even though it may not be considered 'restricted' in the classical sense)? I assume they would as it would be considered offensive by many.
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Comment by Julio Cesar Corona Ortega on April 24, 2010 at 5:21pm
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I have seen Koshy's post, and since it has high chances of being deleted/censored, I will reply to it here.
Firstly, while I do not agree with many (if not most) of Sarah's arguments (or the presentation of them) and I agree she brought a small element of toxicity into the equation, her ban was most certainly unwarranted and, while edgy, I don't consider the pictures she posted to be inappropriate at all. Plus, let's face it, 13 year olds have already seen far worse on the internet.
I agree with the argument that the discourse and some of the ideas presented on this site may be much harder to process for a 13 year old than those picture, which, while edgy, do not represent any risk to their psyche that I can see.
The first one is just a mildly amusing "Demotivational Poster" with bad image editing. The woman is only shown pointing a rifle in what looks like a practice range, not blowing somebody's head off.
The second is a woman in lingerie, seen from the back and an assault rifle hanging from her shoulder, which as pointed before, could easily be submitted as evidence for women empowerment.
The third is a Barbie doll dressed as a suicide bomber, which I find to be a very accurate metaphor of the practice itself. It may be an ideological issue, and it may be presented in an edgy way, but "Jihad Barbie" can, in fact, have a place in the discourse. And believe me, 13 year olds (and even younger) have seen far, far worse at 4Chan. At least in this medium it can be presented as part of an argument, instead of just being shown for "teh lulz".
Edgy? Yes, no question. Inappropriate? Hardly. Ban-worthy? Not even close.
One of the greatest problems of today's society is not that we protect children, but that we OVER protect them. As Nomad very well pointed out, responsibility is being stripped from the parents and placed on media itself, when the opposite should be true. Darklogos' argument of children being exposed to porn is flawed because it is an extreme example. Pornography is already censored in most media and illegal to show to children in most countries, so these parents would have abused their own children either way. Those are not responsible, mature or loving parents. And it is these types of extreme examples that people use to cry foul and force further unnecessary censorship to divert responsibility away from themselves.
I also have several things to say about the "winning EVOKE" mentality, but that's a wh*** other rant and post.
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julio - im puttimng it there too sorry
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Comment by M. on April 24, 2010 at 5:35pm
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There is definitely a HUGE difference between what is deemed offensive by folks around the network, and the fact that folks can't see that is pretty ironic considering we have spent the last few weeks playing a game that is trying to raise people's awareness that "cultural norms" are different in different cultures. A lot of the arguments for Sarah's pictures (so far) have come from folks who say that it's pretty normal for first person shooters and a culture where kids play a lot of those games ... but they assume the pictures are ok because they assume everyone plays those games. Well they don't.
As for Sarah, there are a bunch of different issues here. There is the issue of whether she should be allowed to post her pictures, and then there is the issue of if she should have been suspended for posting the pictures even after the moderators asked her not to post them.
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Comment by Ian Glidewell on April 24, 2010 at 5:37pm
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For those who don't know(And probably should know and should avoid) 4Chan is a massive image board and social networking site where anonymity is king. It has several categories where content is posted, of which there is loose(if not chaotic) moderation. Since the users always retain anonymity, there are very few methods put in place to protect the viewer. In my opinion, it's a site that does a very good job at reminding parents that they should be responsible for what their children are doing on the internet, and not encroach on the absolute freedom of information on the internet.
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no margie - its different from that - she was talking here and turil and sarah shaw tauton challenged us to show proff of censorship and then she posted those pictures again and they were tkaen out and she was suspended
there was no mediation or negotiation
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parents should watch out reg what their kids watch
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In the interests of full disclosure, I also moderate an unruly internet community on a volunteer basis and suspect my trials there are making me more sympathetic to the mods here. Sarah basically gave them a big FU with her repost of those images, after they had asked her not to post them. On my boards we don't ever delete posts (EVER) and we are unique like that. But since a lot of internet communities do we used to get accused of it all the time ... and half the time it was someone who posted something, got slammed for it, deleted it themselves, and then accused us of doing it so they could rephrase what they said in a more sympathetic way to get more sympathy from the other members. Not saying that is what is happening on UE, but it does happen a lot.
Internet communities are unruly beasts and it takes time to develop trust between members and moderators. Eight weeks is not enough time to create that trust so conflict is inevitable. Plus when you are creating a community that encourages your members to question everything, it's also inevitable that the members and moderators will begin to question each other in an increasingly dramatic fashion.
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iron it would go through if it's a straight forward image -want me to try it?
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