Is censorship moral?

[pood]

Allow me to post an example of the harm censorship can do. A woman I know told me that she took photos of her young kids naked, a very common practice. After having the film processed, she said she was warned by the developer that she could get into trouble with the law! Her perfectly innocent, harmless act could have resulted in her imprisonment. So how is that kind of censorship moral? Isn't it evil instead to bully a woman who only wanted to have fun with her children?

Wiow, you are one confused person. Where to start … first, she wasn’t censored, was she?

 

[pood]

When you put someone on ignore, aren't you censoring?

No because nothing is censored. That childish garbage is still posted for anybody unfortunate to read it.

Of course, questions you can’t answer are “childish garbage” and must be censored to protect you sensibilities.

But child porn? Go right ahead!

 

[ZiprHead]

When you put someone on ignore, aren't you censoring?

No because nothing is censored. That childish garbage is still posted for anybody unfortunate to read it.

You're censoring him for yourself.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

When you put someone on ignore, aren't you censoring?

No because nothing is censored. That childish garbage is still posted for anybody unfortunate to read it.

You're censoring him for yourself.

Sadly, I cannot avoid reading some of it at least.

By the way, I do support freedom from speech. In other words, we should all be granted if possible a way to avoid what we don't wish to hear, read, or see.

 

[steve_bank]

Political censorship is about suppressing criticism that makes you uncomfortable, refutes your claims, and that which you have no answers for..

The 1st Amendment freedom of speech and press was probably about prevnting government from suppressing poliical speech and criticism of government. We see that in Russia and China today. I beleve in China is against the law for media to put the government in a bad light.

In a broad sense the ignore function can be seen as a form of censorship. it shields you from things you can not answer. Albeit in the framework of the Emperor's New Clotthes story.

I still do not see where there is any effective censorship of any consequence today in the USA. There is selective reporting and biased media views, but that is protected by freedom of the press.

The FCC has authority over broadcast radio and TV media, I don't think it has oversight of Internet content.

In Setatle we are seeing video of shootings, assaults, and stabbings in the local news.

 

[Millrat]

I think censorship is generaslly moral when it protects people from being hurt who have done nothing to deserve to be hurt. For example child pornography. A child did not choose to be in it, has done nothing to deserve to be in pornography and is harmed by it.

In what way do images of children being harmed, harm children, and how does hiding prosecuting people that trade those images protect children from harm?

Do you think that’s a sensible question?

I think that nobody has yet made a good case for the morality of censorship. If they do, then I may change my mind.

Allow me to post an example of the harm censorship can do. A woman I know told me that she took photos of her young kids naked, a very common practice. After having the film processed, she said she was warned by the developer that she could get into trouble with the law! Her perfectly innocent, harmless act could have resulted in her imprisonment. So how is that kind of censorship moral? Isn't it evil instead to bully a woman who only wanted to have fun with her children?

I’m thinking you’re “example” here demonstrates that your mind is unlikely to be changed with reason or logic.

 

[abaddon]

I think that nobody has yet made a good case for the morality of censorship. If they do, then I may change my mind.

What would you say to this argument:

A: Food tastes bad.
B: That depends.
A: No, food tastes bad and nobody has yet made a good case that food tastes good.

Your OP's question was already answered: It depends. So the next step is for you to respond to that answer instead of trying to control both sides of the argument and keep insisting it must fit your good-or-bad dichotomy.

... she was warned by the developer that she could get into trouble with the law! Her perfectly innocent, harmless act could have resulted in her imprisonment...

If by chance she got in trouble, then IMO that'd be censorship wrongly applied. But jumping all the way from 'some censorship is wrong' to 'all censorship is wrong' is bad logic. Look it up in your book.

You cannot reasonably conclude that all censorship is wrong because sometimes it's misapplied.

 

[steve_bank]

I think censorship is generaslly moral when it protects people from being hurt who have done nothing to deserve to be hurt. For example child pornography. A child did not choose to be in it, has done nothing to deserve to be in pornography and is harmed by it.

In what way do images of children being harmed, harm children, and how does hiding prosecuting people that trade those images protect children from harm?

Do you think that’s a sensible question?

I think that nobody has yet made a good case for the morality of censorship. If they do, then I may change my mind.

Allow me to post an example of the harm censorship can do. A woman I know told me that she took photos of her young kids naked, a very common practice. After having the film processed, she said she was warned by the developer that she could get into trouble with the law! Her perfectly innocent, harmless act could have resulted in her imprisonment. So how is that kind of censorship moral? Isn't it evil instead to bully a woman who only wanted to have fun with her children?

There are positives and negatives to issues like this. Like our soical values and legal system and lws censorship has evolved.

With us humans things lithis are rarely a smple black and white good-bad dichotomy.

I oppose the death penalty not for any basic moral reason, it represents irreversible error. If an innocent person is executed there is no correction possible.

Some people pulled over for apparent DUI may not always be under the influence of alchohol or drugs. That does not mean we stop pulling over drvers for suspected DUI.

Likewise given the scope of child abuse physical and sexual that sometimes an inncent set of pictures may be flagged as abuse is not a reason to remove all censoring of naked kids on te net.

There have been networks and prpbably stiil are of child porn among people who anat it. I don't watch porn any more, I started thinking about what it represented.

A common theme is an underage looking girl being sexually abused by adult men. In some of it the girls are clearly young minors, especially in live sex from Asia. This is not news, it has been report in media, sex trafficking in minor girls facilitated by the Internet.

You can't discuss censorship in today's context without bringing up one's moral views.

 

[Shadowy Man]

You can also assume that he doesn't have empathy, humility, social intelligence, imagination, foresight, an ability to think things through, or much in the way of life experience.

Although, of course, many of those assumptions could be inaccurate, based as they are solely on his fairly limited posting history here.

He does have a bachelor's degree in Business Administration though.

Which also allegedly included a physics course.

Shad, do you realize that you're agreeing with a person who threatened me with physical violence because I hold an opinion he cannot tolerate?

No. I hadn’t realized that. I haven’t been paying too much attention to the thread since there’s not much to be gained here.

How could he threaten you with physical violence? Does he know you and live in the same place? What exactly were the threats?

So although he may get away with that along with his insults above, I have decided not to reply to any of his posts. I don't wish to encourage him in any way and neither should you.

I agree that we should not be insulting. There’s nothing to be gained by that. But I was just playfully teasing.

 

[bilby]

Shad, do you realize that you're agreeing with a person who threatened me with physical violence because I hold an opinion he cannot tolerate?

I should point out that I have never threatened anyone on this board with physical violence, for any reason.

 

[bilby]

I think that nobody has yet made a good case for the morality of censorship. If they do, then I may change my mind.

What would you say to this argument:

A: Food tastes bad.
B: That depends.
A: No, food tastes bad and nobody has yet made a good case that food tastes good.

Your OP's question was already answered: It depends. So the next step is for you to respond to that answer instead of trying to control both sides of the argument and keep insisting it must fit your good-or-bad dichotomy.

... she was warned by the developer that she could get into trouble with the law! Her perfectly innocent, harmless act could have resulted in her imprisonment...

If by chance she got in trouble, then IMO that'd be censorship wrongly applied. But jumping all the way from 'some censorship is wrong' to 'all censorship is wrong' is bad logic. Look it up in your book.

You cannot reasonably conclude that all censorship is wrong because sometimes it's misapplied.

You certainly cannot reasonably conclude that all censorship is wrong because sometimes people make the counterfactual suggestion that it could have been misapplied.

If I warn you that you could go to jail for life for jaywalking, that's more likely evidence that I am badly mistaken about what the penalties for jaywalking are, or perhaps even about what jaywalking actually means, than it is evidence that we live in a society that has draconian punishments for trivial violations of the law.

The most straightforward and reasonable response to the anecdote presented is that the developer was wrong; He may also be entirely apocryphal, a surmise whose weight increases when we consider that nobody has had to have photographs developed since the demise of film in cameras, some two decades ago.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Shad, do you realize that you're agreeing with a person who threatened me with physical violence because I hold an opinion he cannot tolerate?

I should point out that I have never threatened anyone on this board with physical violence, for any reason.

The truth is quoted on this post.

 

[pood]

Shad, do you realize that you're agreeing with a person who threatened me with physical violence because I hold an opinion he cannot tolerate?

I should point out that I have never threatened anyone on this board with physical violence, for any reason.

The truth is quoted on this post.

Did you notice the conditional? Also, “drive right over you” is a metaphor. Finally, it’s really weird that you would dredge up a thread so embarrasisng for you, even more so than this one. You characterized the people you were quoting as death lovers, when really they were people arguing for their own inalienable right to die, if they so choose. which is NOT the same thing as being “death lovers” — except, perhaps, to someone who thinks censoring child porn is more immoral than child porn.

 

[steve_bank]

Derailing his own thread.

The right to die is a love of death?

 

[Jarhyn]

Shad, do you realize that you're agreeing with a person who threatened me with physical violence because I hold an opinion he cannot tolerate?

I should point out that I have never threatened anyone on this board with physical violence, for any reason.

The truth is quoted on this post.

Did you notice the conditional? Also, “drive right over you” is a metaphor. Finally, it’s really weird that you would dredge up a thread so embarrasisng for you, even more so than this one. You characterized the people you were quoting as death lovers, when really they were people arguing for their own inalienable right to die, if they so choose. which is NOT the same thing as being “death lovers” — except, perhaps, to someone who thinks censoring child porn is more immoral than child porn.

Which is weird.

Also, I wonder who is going to tell Unknown Soldier that InkBunny is a thing? (InkBunny is the furry art site devoted to hosting all the content other sites generally refuse to host: "cub", "zoo", AI etc.)

Some sites do censor it, but enough don't that it doesn't matter, and it's not a "legally enforced" censorship.

It would certainly be immoral for say, FurAffinity to try to shut down sites like e621 and IB, but they can't and don't, and those sites still serve what I am sure many here would consider "child porn".

 

[bilby]

Shad, do you realize that you're agreeing with a person who threatened me with physical violence because I hold an opinion he cannot tolerate?

I should point out that I have never threatened anyone on this board with physical violence, for any reason.

The truth is quoted on this post.

Using idiomatic metaphor when asserting the right to self defence, isn't a threat of physical violence.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I think that nobody has yet made a good case for the morality of censorship. If they do, then I may change my mind.

What would you say to this argument:

A: Food tastes bad.
B: That depends.
A: No, food tastes bad and nobody has yet made a good case that food tastes good.

I would say that that is not an argument in the logical sense. It's actually a dialog.

Your OP's question was already answered: It depends.

That "answer" is way too vague. Besides, there are no questions in the OP but only in the title. I've rebutted everything said by all those not on my ignore list.

So the next step is for you to respond to that answer instead of trying to control both sides of the argument and keep insisting it must fit your good-or-bad dichotomy.

I don't know how I'm controlling both sides of the argument.

... she was warned by the developer that she could get into trouble with the law! Her perfectly innocent, harmless act could have resulted in her imprisonment...

If by chance she got in trouble, then IMO that'd be censorship wrongly applied.

Great! So you recognize the harm censorship can do. The laws against child pornography are ridiculous.

But jumping all the way from 'some censorship is wrong' to 'all censorship is wrong' is bad logic. Look it up in your book.

Sure. On page 209 of Schaum's Outline of Logic (Schaums' Outline Series) 2nd Edition, we read:

Hasty generalization means fallaciously inferring a conclusion from inadequate knowledge of some of its members.

So the argument you posted above is a hasty generalization where the presumably inadequate knowledge of the harm resulting from some censorship is proof that all censorship is harmful.

You cannot reasonably conclude that all censorship is wrong because sometimes it's misapplied.

That would be correct if that's what I did. Can you offer one example of censorship doing more good than harm to an innocent person? One possible example could be the censorship of libel. Of course, censoring libel could lead to the censorship of truth, which, as you might agree, is often immoral and harmful.

 

[steve_bank]

La La La I can't hear you

https://www.contagiouscompanies.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/lalalala-listening.jpg

 

[bilby]

I've rebutted everything said by all those not on my ignore list.

Some claims are fatally weakened by the disclaimers that are attached.

It's easy to win an argument when you choose only to argue with those who agree with you.

 

[bilby]

censoring libel could lead to the censorship of truth

No, it couldn't. The law provides that truth is a complete defence against accusations of libel, so by definition, libel cannot be truth.