I wish he would have at least nodded his head to the idea that creating censorship infrastructure today, even for the right reasons, might lead to problems tomorrow. Also I wish whatever reporter wrote the story had asked his take on that.
There's a whole seperate article in the opinion section on why the law doesn't make sense http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/21/david-came...
The 'quality' UK papers generally try to seperate opinions from factual reporting. Maybe the NYT WSJ etc do this as well?
There are plenty of criticisms of this law that are perfectly factual, like "Cameron doesn't have a God damn idea how the Internet works," or "No censorship scheme on the Internet has ever remained effective against the dedicated for more than a few minutes," or "Cameron has entirely failed to describe what he means by 'violent pornography' in a way that is specific enough to be legally actionable or differentiable from pornography/the Web in general." Not including any such facts in the main article is dishonest.
The problem with this thread is that it's entirely possible to read it as both my post and your reply are sarcastic, or they both aren't.
If you really require me to be explicit, I can spell it out for you:
* Each person has an individual responsibility to realize such things for their self via critical thinking.
* A reporter has no legal responsibility to uphold journalistic principals.
* A reporter should have an ethical responsibility to uphold journalistic principals.
This, to me, is the equivalent of victim-blaming:
You walk past a dark alley and see someone being
assaulted. You are under no legal obligation to
help the person, therefore you do not help the
person. The person has no right to be angry at
you because they should have been responsible
for *their own* safety and shouldn't rely on
anyone else. The person being assaulted is the
person that is *really* at fault because they
failed to protect their own personal safety.
If you wanted to have a serious conversation about journalistic integrity, you would not begin with sarcasm and continue with condescension. That's why you didn't deserve a serious reply, and still don't. The entire thread you started is also off-topic and as worthwhile as your thoughts in it.
In your original post, you stated that it was the reader's responsibility to do the critical thinking necessary to realize that the censorship controls could be used for 'evil.' This view implies that people without the requisite critical thinking skills are irresponsible, and therefore deserve what they get[1].
[1] Couldn't think of a better way of putting it. I'm not saying that you're stating that sentiment directly.
His view also fails to acknowledge the fact that press is not either cheap propaganda / sensationalism, versus well written and researched articles. There are also well written and researched manipulative articles that even a reader with good enough critical thinking skills might be mislead by.
It's easy to blame the reader when what you read is "too good to be true" or "so obvious that it's not", but when a fabrication makes its way into a rather respected journal, or when a more or less respected author gets something unusually wrong (which you're not clever enough to spot because it's not your expertise), then one can't be blamed to have believed it in the first place.
You started the conversation with statement that arguably defends shoddy journalism. Instead of backing it up, you claim the response to your comment is off-topic and proclaim offense at sarcasm and condescension (both useful devices for eliciting emotional responses in debate...).
How about taking the high road?
* They realize it could be used for bad in the future, but they have delusions of, "bad things couldn't happen here." [ Sort of like the idea in America that, "Fascism could never happen here." ]
* They are more comfortable with creating said power because they are currently in control of it, and are short-sighted enough to not realize that this won't always be the case (i.e. the 'government' will control it, but they aren't guaranteed to be a part of the government).
Another possibility, avoiding Hanlon's razor: They honestly have trouble understanding how or why someone could in good conscience disagree. They don't want control or censorship in the abstract; they just want to legislate morality on this one issue because their position is so "obviously" right. Using laws like this to censor things that don't harm kids would be unthinkable, but harming kids is clearly bad, so this law neither is nor opens up the door for censorship. They don't see the slope because the motives look completely different.
>Hilarious. In which fantasy land is every outcome of a law predictable before it gets issued.
Probably in the same fantasy land where the parent described "every outcome" of the law, instead of just a few. If you wanna employ "hilarious" and "snark" better first get what the other guy said right.
I'm not even sure what your snark is supposed to be based on.
For one, nobody above claimed they can predict "every outcome" of a law.
Second, of course we can we can predict SOME outcomes of a law before it gets issued. Often times, we can even tell that a law is good or bad before it gets issued.
Predicting the outcome of laws is what the legislation process itself is based on: in the idea that the legislators draft laws in the way that they _predict_ will bring upon a possitive outcome. They don't draft random statements and see what sticks.
Now, because a lot of stuff can hamper the legislators (e.g private interests, appeal to get votes, ideology and partisan politics, fad moral opinions etc), a lot of times the public can tell a law is crap even before it gets issued.
