Re: [hrpc] Censorship

[Jens Finkhaeuser <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

I've had similar discussions in other places; this is by no means the only venue in which this is being discussed. In some of those other places, it's become apparent - just as you are describing here - that people interpret words such as "sanctions" or "censorship" differently from each other.

Personally, I am working on ways to make the Internet less liable to be controlled by any single entity, so you can imagine that "sanctions" and "censorship" are not concepts I support lightly, if at all.

I've had the fortune to live and work with people who have had their existence or lives threatened, and that has opened my eyes to one thing that often seems to be left aside in such discussions on principles: when lives are at stake, people will self-impose draconian rules quite readily. When lives are not at stake, those draconian rules are anathema to the same people. Safety trumps principles; principles are (for the most part) only important when you're safe.

What this tells me is the mechanisms for "cutting off" parts of the Internet must exist, as a self-defense measure. We seem to be discussing things here, however, as if those mechanisms were the exact same thing as legally mandating their use.

To put it simply:

1.  A blocklist by itself is just data.
2.  A blocklist that is published with some rationale for its existence is a call for boycott.
    

3.  A blocklist implemented to defend against attacks is often necessary (and we see this mechanism in firewall rules, spam filtering, etc. everywhere), and definitely not censorship; it's self-defense.
    

4.  A blocklist that is to be applied mandatorily is censorship.

>From what I read by everybody's contribution, nobody here is arguing that #4 is a good idea. Yet much of the discussion seems to revolve around that.

Let's move on to #3 then. If we have blocklists in wide use already, who currently authors these? There will be plenty of answers to this question, but they all have one characteristic: none of the authors are a multi-stakeholder organization that thinks #4 is an atrocity.

Which means, by definition, any of the plethora of blocklists already in use is more suspect than any hyopthetical blocklist being discussed here. Let's please not lose sight of that.

What people seem to fear - some have expressed as much - that #2 automatically will led to #4. I can see that as well, and that is the part that worries me. Additionally, elsewhere I've seen it being said that mathematics is against us: adding one more blocklist to the Internet isn't going to make it more free. And in isolation, that argument is entirely valid.

So... and bear with me here... let's have this org that maintains such blocklists. Let's have a charter for them that focuses on humanitarian values, and treats access to the Internet as, essentially, a human right (which IMHO is not wrong nowadays).

Let's make the major factor in deciding what to add to the list whether this part of the Internet poses more of a threat to human rights than it helps promote it. For example, the "online shopping" part previously mentioned clearly does not satisfy these criteria, while some aggressive nation's military sites might.

Nobody is forced to implement these lists. In fact, it might be possible to copyleft this, in spirit as well as in fact. Publish it under a license that if you do implement the list, it cannot be a copy; it cannot be automatically extracted from the published list and applied to your part of the network. It must require manual intervention, and a published rationale for the addition that is not a mere copy of the original. Make people work for adopting it, or make them liable. Serial offenders to this might find themselves on the list as well.

I'm not suggesting that this is a fully formed idea above any criticism, for what it's worth. Consider it more of a starting point.

What I see in this discussion here is much the same range of arguments as what I see in discussions on how one can defend against fascism; as a German (yes, yes, Godwin etc.) I have had my share of these. The point is, I keep coming back to Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance; I'm going to lazily quote this from Wikipedia because it's easiest:

"Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

In much the same way, I think the Internet community should reserve the right to suppress that with destroys the Internet community. It's abundantly clear that blocklists created by single stakeholder interests are destructive and not something the community should support. It's also abundantly clear, I think, that unfettered disinformation campaigns pose genuine threats to a tolerant Internet community.

It seems to me that (details to be worked out, of course) publishing a blocklist of parties known to subvert the tolerant Internet community is exactly the kind of defensive mechanism one must adopt to uphold the community; what is emphatically not required and should be discouraged is for this blocklist to be implemented without further checks and balances in place.

So maybe a multi-stakeholder org doing this (in a copyleft-ish way?) is not a bad idea at all, but exactly the kind of thing that exercises the open Internet community to its fullest extent?

For what it's worth, I fully understand people reacting with frustration and cynicism to this. I have the same voice within me. But it is a reactionary voice responding to fear; I am not convinced that either fear-responses or re-action are the right voice to listen to.

The point is, there's not much need to reply with criticism, not because this view is above criticism, but because I've probably told myself the same things already. Instead I would invite people to ask themselves what the Internet community can do to actively strengthen its values (however diverse, there is overlap, as evidenced by this discussion)?

Thank you for bearing with this rather lengthy response, and especially since I'm quite new here!

Jens