> a firm stand against the Great Firewall of China

GFW could censor stuff using QoS discrimination. Un-welcome sites has really bad connection. How do you deal with that?

Oh that's a great quote, I really hope they stand behind it. As long as they are pushing for a strengthened version of the DMCA safe harbor act, more power to them.

Exactly. I remember thinking when all of the big tech companies were asked by the Indian Government to give them access to some data or censor some posts (don't remember the details). But they pretty much all agreed, because they were too afraid they'd be the only company refusing. But if they all joined together to oppose it, I don't think there's much the Government could've done.

Same thing with China. Google suffered and still suffers the consequences of going against their government then. They should've allied with other companies first before deciding to pull out of China.

>> information should flow freely across national borders, uninhibited by tariffs, regulations and government censorship

Funny that they qualify it as government censorship. Because everyone knows that Facebook will censor the crap out of anything they find objectionable. Just a week ago they banned a cartoon of Adam and Eve because it contained nipples. http://tinyurl.com/d5tqnhk

It isn't a violation of free speech for a private publisher or forum to deny you publishing rights on their platform.

Facebook is a private playground. They are allowed complete discretion over what they allow and don't allow on their private network, and this isn't a problem because you can stop using it at any time.

It is much harder to "stop using" your country of citizenship, which is why many people feel that governments should be held to a much higher standard of openness, accountability and freedom.

That's true from a legal standpoint, but it's still a double standard in principles.

edit: again, not sure why people are downvoting without explaining why.

I want you to be able to say whatever you'd like no matter how horrible without fear of government censorship; however, I will not let you use my printing press, blog, etc to do it.

There is nothing inconsistent with this.

>>I want you to be able to say whatever you'd like no matter how horrible without fear of government censorship; however, I will not let you use my printing press, blog, etc to do it.

That sounds too much like the number one cited reason against net neutrality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality#Arguments_ag...

I disagree. Should the New York Times leave their front door open and allow anyone to walk in off the street and write an un-vetted opinion piece and place it on the front page of tomorrow's paper? That would be ridiculous.

I don't see how you could then turn around and claim that NYT supporting freedom of speech is in any way a double standard. They aren't preventing you from creating your own paper, in which you can say whatever you like. When the government limits your speech, you don't have that option.

> Should the New York Times leave their front door open and allow anyone to walk in off the street and write an un-vetted opinion piece and place it on the front page of tomorrow's paper?

To elaborate, freedom of speech actually does mean the freedom to speak. If you're trying to speak and some asshole is yelling over you, you're being shut down.

> When the government limits your speech, you don't have that option.

More specifically, it's the government's job to protect that speech. When the government doesn't do that, it's nearly as egregious as when it actively censors speech. For instance, if you sent thugs around to threaten your critics, it's the government's job to stop that. There are a lot of angles by which they can justify doing so, and this is a relatively unused one (esp. because it's so abstract), but it's there.