UPDATE (LATER THAT DAY): Amazon claims it was a “glitch.” Dubiousness abounds. See the comments section of this post for more. ORIGINAL POST: Twitter is aflame today, where it’s still Easter Day over in North America. For my part, I ran across the news on Tobias Buckell’s feed. Right, Amazon, do you want to know why everyone is offended by what’s been done? It’s because intelligent people — which are presumably a big part of your customer base, seeing as you’re selling books — can’t stand to be protected for their own good.1. They abhor it, they find it arrogant …
Tag: censorship
Minerva, Censorship, Schlerosis, and IPs
Events in Korea these days remind me a fair bit of that Demosthenes/Locke subplot in Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game. If you haven’t read the novel, well, basically a couple of really smart kids hijack the world political debate by posting pseudonymously online, using personae that are, in fact, quite different from their own personalities, sometimes quite consciously, to determine the way the global debate plays out. I’ve posted in the past about the Korean internet, censorship, and the odious “Real-Name System” that has essentially eliminated all possibility of real anonymity online at many websites in Korea by requiring …
Free Speech? F*ck You, Citizens!
How is a democracy supposed to work when citizens can be criminally prosecuted for disagreeing with the government? It’s too bad that there’s nobody left outside Korea who can pressure the government here to actually allow criticism, differing opinions, and so on. But hey, when the major governments of the world are convinced they have God on their side… The national prosecution and police say they are going to criminally prosecute people involved in spreading so-called “mad cow horror stories” (gwangubyeong goedam) on the Internet, in addition to prosecuting the organizers of candlelight protests against imports of American beef. A …