denyerec.co.uk

Looks like the snowball is about to gather speed, so all stand for the entrance of Big Brother! “British” Telecom have block the Pirate Bay, presumably off the back of the lawsuit which found the operators guilty of linking to other people. Whilst I don’t support rampant proliferation of copyright material (As a photographer, that is one thing you become quite sensitive to) I am acutely aware of the ramifications of both the lawsuit and the move on behalf of BT. What we are seeing here is pressure from private enterprise forcing potentially erroneous legal judgements and censorship. BT Blocked the pirate bay because MGM and the music industry leant on them hard enough. Will they block anti-war material if BAE Systems lean hard enough too? Will they surreptitiously silence Pro-Green website should Shell and Exxon pad the brown envelopes with sufficient enthusiasm? I believe they’re calling this move an adoptation of a “voluntary” code, voluntary purely because the capitalist directors of said actions aren’t the ones who can call it law. Yet.

Blocking adult content, whilst altruistic in the vein of preventing exposure (ho ho) of children to such material is at the mercy of whoever gets to define “Adult”. Do we prevent coverage of wars via mobile media beause it’s “Unsuitable for children”? How about police brutality, will that eventually fall under the PG-13 filter? Public opinion and the social conscious is already defined by and large by the powers that control popular media but, for now, the free press and democratic contributors to the public domain pool of knowledge are at least given an even field on which to play. I’m as able to visit fox.com as I am www.medialens.org. Admittedly I choose not to visit Fox, as I don’t want to have to take a shower afterward, but you hopefully see my point. Once private enterprise is allowed to interfere with the neutrality of the internet insofar as to have content that conflicts with their agenda blocked, you open the doors to a dark, dark place.