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Welcome to The Censorship Pages. Here you will find information about the freedom of speech and of the press in reference to the written word. These pages provide the resources needed to explore how, and why censorship happens not only in the United States, but all around the world. I hope these pages are helpful and encourage you to get involved.

PLEASE NOTE: These pages were coded over six years ago as a resource for Bannd Books Week. Many of them are now no posted on the web or have moved to a new address. We are trying to correct any like we can and note others that are dead. If you can find the new URL for a dead link, or a substitute page, please let us know.

As an example of a just banned book, David Guterson's acclaimed book Snow Falling on Cedars has been banned by the South Kitsap School District in Washington state as an inappropriate and obscene book. Why it was banned is much deeper, as the book is written about the racism and anti-Japanese persecution during and after WW II on the Kitsap Peninsula. The book was banned because Kitsap is still a right wing, racist stronghold and they wish to block any recognition of their bigoted past and present.

Send comments and questions to webmaster@booksatoz.com

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The Censorship Pages -- Information on Censorship of the ...

Subsections

In the United States, we have the First Amendment of the Constitution that guarantees us certain things.

Censorship and free speech are often seen as being two sides of the same thing, censorship often defined as ``the suppression of free speech''. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with this definition, but for my purposes, I find I need better definitions. My definitions have no particular force, of course, but when grappling with problems, one must often clearly define things before one can even begin discussing the problem, let alone solving it. Thus, I will establish my own personal definitions. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the traditional definitions, but it turns out that the analysis I want to do is not possible with a fuzzy conception of what ``free speech'' is.

It's typically bad essay form to start a section with a dictionary definition, but since I want to contrast my definition with the conventional dictionary definition, it's hard to start with anything else. Free speech is defined by dictionary.com as

Since I don't want to define free speech in terms of censorship, lets remove that and put in its place what people are really afraid of.

Considering both the target of the speech and the publisher of the speech is necessary. Suppose I use an Earthlink-hosted web page to criticise a Sony-released movie. If Earthlink can suppress my speech for any reason they please (on the theory that they own the wires and the site hosting), and have no legal or ethical motivation to not suppress the speech, then in theory, all Sony would have to do is convince Earthlink it is in their best interest to remove my site. The easiest way to do that is simply cut Earthlink a check exceeding the value to Earthlink of continuing to host my page, which is a trivial amount of money to Sony. In the absence of any other considerations, most people would consider this a violation of my right to ``free speech'', even though there may be nothing actually illegal in this scenario. So if we allow the owner of the means of expression to shut down our speech for any reason they see fit, it's only a short economic step to allow the target of the expression to have undue influence, especially an age where the gap between one person's resources and one corporation's resources continues to widen.

Hence the legal concept of a common carrier, both obligated to carry speech regardless of content and legally protected from the content of that speech. The ``safe harbor'' provisions in the DMCA, which further clarified this in the case of online message transmission systems, is actually a good part of the DMCA often overlooked by people who read too much Slashdot and think all of the DMCA is bad. The temptation to hold companies like Earthlink responsible for the content of their customers arises periodically, but it's important to resist this, because there's almost no way to not abuse the corresponding power to edit their customer's content.

I also change ``opinion'' to expression, to better fit the context of this definition, and let's call this ``the right to free speech'':

Though it's not directly related to the definition of free speech, I'd like to add that we expect people to fund their expressions of free speech themselves, and the complementary expectation that nobody is obligated to fund speech they disagree with. For instance, we don't expect people to host comments that are critical about them on their own site.

By far the most important thing that this definition captures that the conventional definitions do not is the symmetry required of true free speech. Free speech is not merely defined in terms of the speakers, but also the listeners.

For structural symmetry with the Free Speech section, let's go ahead and start with the dictionary definition:

The best way to understand my definition of censoring is to consider the stereotypical example of military censorship. During World War II, when Allied soldiers wrote home from the front, all correspondence going home was run through [human] censors to remove any references that might allow someone to place where that soldier was, what that soldier was armed with, etc. The theory was that if that information was removed, it couldn't end up in the hands of the enemy, which could be detrimental to the war effort. The soldier (sender) sent the message home (receiver) via the postal service as a letter (medium). The government censors intercepted that message and modified it before sending it on. If the censor so chose, they could even completely intercept the letter and prevent anything from reaching home.

This leads me naturally to my basic definition of censorship:

There is one last thing that we must take into account, and that is the middleman. Newspapers often receive a press release, but they may process, digest, and editorialize on the basis of that press release, not simply run the press release directly. The Internet is granting astonishing new capabilities to the middlemen, in addition to making the older ways of pre-processing information even easier, and we should not label those all as censorship.

Fortunately, there is a simple criterion we can apply. Do both the sender and the receiver agree to use this information middleman? If so, then no censorship is occurring. This seems intuitive; newspapers aren't really censoring, they're just being newspapers.

You could look at this as not being censorship only as long as the middlemen are being truthful about what sort of information manipulation they are performing. You could equally well say that it is impossible to characterize how a message is being manipulated because a message is such a complicated thing once you take context into account. Basically, since this is simply a side-issue that won't gain us anything, so we leave it to the sender, receiver, and middleman to defend their best interests. It takes the agreement of all three to function, which can be removed at any time, so there is always an out.

For example, many news sites syndicate headlines and allow anybody to display them, including mine. If a news site runs two articles, one for some position and one against, and some syndication user only runs one of the stories, you might claim that distorts the meaning of the original articles taken together. Perhaps this is true, but if the original news site was worried about this occurring, perhaps those stories should not have been syndicated, or perhaps they should have been bound more tightly together, or perhaps this isn't really a distortion. Syndication implies that messages will exist in widely varying contexts.

Like anything else, there is some flex room here. The really important point is to agree that the criterion is basically correct. We can argue about the exact limits later.

So, my final definition:

Going back to the original communication model I outlined earlier, the critical difference between the two definitions becomes clear. Free speech is defined in terms of the endpoints, in terms of the rights of the senders and receivers. Censorship is defined in terms of control over the medium.

The methods of suppressing free speech and the methods of censoring are very different. Suppression of free speech tends to occur through political or legal means. Someone is thrown in jail for criticizing the government, and the police exert their power to remove the controversial content from the Internet. On the receiver's side, consider China, which is an entire country who's government has decided that there are publicly available sites on the Internet that will simply not be available to anybody in that country, such as the Wall Street Journal. Suppressing free speech does not really require a high level of technology, just a high level of vigilance, which all law enforcement requires anyhow.

Censorship, on the other hand, is taking primarily technological forms. Since messages flow on the Internet at speeds vastly surpassing any human's capabilities to understand or process, technology is being developed that attempts to censor Internet content, with generally atrocious results. (A site called Peacefire http://www.peacefire.org has been good at documenting the failures of some of the most popular censorware, as censoring software is known.) Nevertheless, the appeal of such technology to some people is such that in all likelihood, money will continue to be thrown at the problem until some vaguely reasonable method of censorship is found.

The ways of combating suppression of free speech and censorship must also differ. Censorship is primarily technological, and thus technological answers may be found to prevent censorship, though making it politically or legally unacceptable can work. Suppression of free speech, on the other hand, is primarily political and legal, and in order to truly win the battle for free speech, political and legal power will need to be brought to bear.

These definitions are crafted to fit into the modern model of communication I am using, and I have defined them precisely enough that hopefully we can recognize it when we see it, because technology-based censorship can take some truly surprising forms, which we'll see as we go.

Originally posted here:
Censorship and Free Speech - jerf.org

Censorship in all its forms is often unjustifiable and is used simply to stop truths or ideas emerge which draw attention to powerful people or governments, or undermine ideology. This is inexcusable.

When the exercise of the right to free expression clashes with the rights of others or threatens the safety of the nation, legislators face a difficult exercise of drawing lines; is a restriction necessary and how far should it go?

As James Madison, who framed the US Constitutions protection of freedom of expression, wrote, it is often prudent to permit some abuse of freedom of expression in order to ensure that legitimate use of the right is not discouraged:

Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything, and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It ... is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding the proper fruits.

One of the main arguments advanced against licensing of journalists and publications was its indiscriminate nature: denial of a licence is tantamount to a ban on all future articles, without regard to their content.

But what about a statement, whether written or audiovisual, which has already been completed but not yet made public? Should the authorities only impose sanctions after publication, where justified, or should they, in appropriate circumstances, be able to prevent its release?

Prior censorship poses special dangers to freedom of expression. If the authorities are able to suppress publications which nobody has seen, it becomes impossible for others to verify whether the suppression was indeed justified; it is a question of time before such an unchecked power is abused to prevent criticism of government. One partial solution is to make the authorities decision subject to court appeal. But this creates a different problem; control by the authorities of the timing of the flow of information is a considerable power. Challenging a decision to censor information will be an expensive and slow process, which many may not even use. Furthermore, news is a perishable commodity, so that success in court after lengthy proceedings will often prove a pyrrhic victory.

Because of the risk of abuse compared to sanctions after the fact, the American Convention on Human Rights prohibits prior censorship altogether, except to protect children. Article 13(2) of the ACHR states:

The exercise of the right provided for in the foregoing paragraph shall not be subject to prior censorship

Nevertheless, some courts have been reluctant to rule prior restraints out categorically, mainly because the damage done by a publication may not in all cases be reparable through subsequent sanctions. This dilemma was posed starkly in one American case, after a magazine, The Progressive, had attempted to publish an article explaining in some detail how to construct a hydrogen bomb. The author and publisher argued that they were merely synthesising publicly available documents, with the purpose of raising awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons. The District Judge held:

A mistake in ruling against The Progressive [will] curtail defendants [right to freedom of expression] in a drastic and substantial fashion. [But a] mistake in ruling against the United States could pave the way for thermonuclear annihilation for us all. In that event, our right to life is extinguished and the right to publish becomes moot.

The case did not reach the US Supreme Court. In other disputes, however, the Supreme Court has repeatedly stated the following position: Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.

International bodies have echoed this point of view. In a report on the Republic of Korea, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression stated that any system of prior restraint on freedom of expression carries with it a heavy presumption of invalidity under international human rights law. The ECtHR ruled that the dangers inherent in prior restraints are such that they call for the most careful scrutiny.

This last case involved the ad hoc application of prior restraint to a specific harmful expression the authorities had gotten wind of the upcoming publication, and had applied to a court to prevent it. Systems of prior restraint whereby publications must be submitted to censors for clearance before being distributed can never be justified for the media, and have for some time now been unknown among democracies.

The position in international law can be summarised as follows: Although the right to freedom of expression does not require an absolute ban on prior censorship, this should be a highly exceptional measure, taken only when a publication threatens grave harm, such as loss of life or serious harm to health, safety or the environment. An article deemed defamatory, blasphemous, obscene or overly critical of the government would rarely if ever meet this threshold. Moreover, a system whereby media content must be officially cleared before it can be released would be unacceptable; its harm to freedom of expression would plainly far outweigh the benefit to its goals.

See the original post here:
Censorship, Violence & Press Freedom What we do Article 19

Politically, there exists only what the public knows to exist. ("Politicamente, s existe aquilo que o pblico sabe que existe.")

Censorship usually refers to the state's engaging in activities designed to suppress certain information or ideas. In the past, this has been done by burning books, jailing dissidents, and swamping people with government propaganda. In modern times, the same techniques can be used, but in places like China it is complemented with a nation-wide Internet firewall and the co-option of journalists.

More generally, the term is also used any time people in positions of power try to prevent facts or ideas embarrassing to them from coming to light. This can be done by editorial boards of periodicals and journals, by restricting what their writers can actually research or write about, or by restricting and censoring what they do write, preventing it from being published. This can be done for many reasons, including due to fairly legitimate issues of style, or topics that editors just don't think are right for their publication. This type of censorship is not (and probably should not be) illegal; to force a journal or web site to promote ideas the owners and editors find anathema would be a violation of free speech. Actual censorship, however, is usually done much more maliciously and threats (financial, legal or physical) can be made to prevent something going to publication.

One pernicious result of this "right to not publish" can result in a form of censorship wherein all "major" outlets of information are owned by large corporations, which tend to have certain interests in common, and might, as a group, make it very hard to find information critical of those interests.

Censorship can also come from a government level, and it is this that is usually considered the worst kind of censorship. While individual corporations or private ventures have a right to control the information they host, and their readers are welcome to go elsewhere for their information, governments have a hold over everybody without exception. This leads to a population at large being denied information and more often than not, forcibly fed incorrect information. It should be noted that, while citizens in most Western countries are safe against government censorship (for the most part, at least), other places have almost completely state-run media where literally no alternative exists for the public to access their information. In recent years, China has been somewhat notorious in censoring large portions of the internet from its citizens.

In modern times, due to ubiquitous channels of mass communication, a kind of censorship can be performed (intentionally or otherwise) by swamping the people with other information to hide some particular point. This form of censorship is associated with the Huxleyan flavour of dystopia (e.g. Brave New World),[1] in which pleasurable, visceral, immediate, concrete stimuli (e.g., supermodels, baby bumps, or Charlie Sheen) crowd out troubling, cerebral, long-range, abstract stimuli (e.g., global warming, nuclear safety, the epidemiological consequences of vaccination refusal).[2]

Counterprotests "shouting down" a group of people are sometimes accused of being censorship, but since they don't usually actually prevent or deny the free expression of what they are protesting, again, this is not really censorship. But the waters can get murky at times!

Also, there is the now almost time-honored way of releasing "bad" political news - do it on Friday evening, after the major news outlets have wrapped up their stories. By Monday, it's not news any more, and often gets much less attention that it might have otherwise. This was brought to light when someone mentioned that 11th September 2001 was a "good day to bury bad news".[3]

The United States has recently seen more use of this insidious form of censorship. In order to "accommodate" demonstrators at high-profile events, they are shepherded into a pre-assigned area rather being allowed their right of free assembly. These areas are usually placed well out of the media spotlight - for instance, at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention in Boston, the "free speech zone" was some distance away from the building where the convention was held - in a wasteland of construction debris and fences under a roadway that was partially dismantled.

The Bible has at times been noted as containing unsuitable content which would likely result in its censorship in some areas were it not for its religious significance. Prior to the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations into local languages were often censored or prohibited.

It is often claimed by conspiracy theorists or people attacking the Christian religion that a large number of books were rejected or suppressed from the official Bible in order to hide divine revelation or to prevent embarrassment. This is highly misleading. While there are a large number of apocryphal religious Jewish and Christian religious texts, very few of them were ever widely regarded as authentic. Of the early apocryphal works, only The Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Gospel of the Hebrews ever appeared to have much currency outside of small sub-groups of Christians, and even they were considered widely controversial or noted as being "despised" by many early members of the Church. The books which today make up the New Testament are believed to have all originated in the first or second centuries CE, and the contents of those works are considered to be very well preserved, with only a few notable differences (most notably the end of the Gospel of Mark, which may have been written after the rest of the Gospel).

Many of the apocryphal religious writings were censored by the early Church; it is noted that the Apocalypse of Peter was, at one point, forbidden to be read in Church, presumably indicating that they did not consider it to be holy scripture.

One notable example of a highly successful piece of apocryphal writing was the Book of Mormon, written by Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints. It was first published in 1830, a very long time after other biblical apocrypha had been dismissed; it is universally rejected by all other Christian sects. There have been numerous other, less successful attempts at creating new Christian canon.

This varies depending on the country and local views and laws.

Many "rental" and even "on sale" videos are censored. Scenes involving nudity, especially of the male frontal variety, are usually removed. Sometimes one will see both versions on offer, with different ratings on the box. When offered as television broadcasts, similar steps are also taken, with additional editing often employed to make the film fit its time slot. This is sometimes done to lower the level of gore for a film to be broadcast at particular times. For American television in particular, bad words (which are considered worse than all-out gun-toting violence) are also bleeped, cut, or voiced over.

In some parts of continental Europe there is almost no censorship of sexual scenes. In Spain, for example, late-night free-to-air local channels may broadcast uncut hardcore pornography.

In the UK, the BBFC will not censor movies without the permission of the film's producers, but this censorship may be necessary in order to give the movie a specific rating. For example, to preserve its PG rating, Star Wars Episode II is censored to remove a headbutt that would have given the film a 12A rating if it had been left in. Similar guidelines apply for nudity and bad language.

On television, most types of nudity are usually allowed to be shown after the "watershed" of 9pm, except for shots of an erect penis, which are forbidden. Scenes of simulated sexual activity are permitted; real depictions of sex are typically not.

Censorship of books has often included an outright ban on publication. D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was not legally printed in the UK until 1960, for example. Its publishing was part of possibly the greatest social upheaval of the 20th century; the prosecutor asked if the book was one which "you would wish your wife or servants to read" (it used the word "cunt" - shock, horror!) This sort of censorship persists to the modern day, with the works of authors such as Judy Blume being frequently challenged.

Other censorship can occur for the less blatant but more insidious reason of marketability. The third "Hitchiker's Guide" books, Life, the Universe and Everything, was censored for the American market. Two occurrences of "Asshole" were changed to "Kneebiter," and "The Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word 'Fuck' In A Serious Screenplay." was altered to "The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word "Belgium" in a Serious Screenplay."

Producers of films also engage in two kinds of self censorship. Sometimes, just one scene or shot is all that it takes to change a film's rating. Both kinds involve paying attention to the "standards" while making the film in order to achieve the desired rating. Sometimes, a movie-maker seeks to obtain a lower rating by reducing objectionable material, possibly due to a contractual obligation to keep the film below a certain level, or simply for marketing purposes - G-rated movies have a different target audience, and PG-13 movies have historically been considered to have the largest audience demographic. Filmmakers most especially try to avoid NC-17 ratings or the local equivalent, as many theater chains will refuse to show such movies, greatly reducing their potential profitability.

In a related phenomenon, other times, a film-maker seeks to obtain a higher rating in order to promote the film's "adultness", usually to teenagers who wouldn't be caught dead paying to watch a "family friendly" movie, or simply because the audience will misunderstand what the movie is about if it gets a lower rating. A movie which might otherwise be rated G or PG might have a single instance of cursing inserted into it in order to raise its rating to PG-13, thereby presenting the film as being targeted towards its proper demographic.

Film-makers will sometimes attempt to game the system by including a scene or a line intending for it to be rejected by the producers or studio, either in order to "negotiate" down to the material that they really want to include while still pretending to be reasonable, or in order to distract the raters from other potentially objectionable material. This material occasionally is not rejected, and thus ends up in the final product, while at other times the rejected material may be used in promotional material before being cut from the final edit of the film. One example is the line "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school", from Fight Club, which was originally presented as "I want to have your abortion" as the line they could back down from, although the original line is included as a deleted scene on the Fight Club DVD. (The latter line "I want to have your abortion" was actually the original line from the book.[4])

The line between self-censorship and simple editing is not always clear-cut; people may cut out unimportant material simply because they feel it would distract or bother the audience, and thereby better present their true artistic vision or moral of the work, or simply for marketing reasons where their goal is simply to produce something to be consumed.

Lately, in several countries, a new form of censorship has been afoot. Unlike with previous forms, its promoters and practitioners not only pretend to be "committed to free speech," but also to be advocating or carrying out the censorship in the name of promoting or enforcing human rights.

Specifically, they have provided "hate speech" laws and (in some cases) special "human rights" tribunals, which function in the following manner:

This went on with little remark for many years, since the only people being convicted were neo-Nazis who advocated violence against Jews and other non-neo-Nazi groups.

That situation has changed with the designation of two new groups as "protected": Muslims and gays. Unlike race, both homosexuality and adherence to Islam are held by a significant sector of the population to be a "mutable" characteristic; homosexuality being deemed that way by proponents of reparative therapy, while adherence to Islam being indisputably so (arguably some Muslims will tell you apostasy results in capital punishment, but places with such practices are unlikely to have freedom of speech anyway). This means that, unlike in the cases of racism or anti-Semitism, much of the opposition to Islam and (to a lesser degree) homosexuality is not based in hate. Hence, prosecution of "hate speech" on these grounds is often regarded as ideological censorship.

In the U.K., the acquittal of Nick Griffin on the charge of calling Islam a "wicked vicious faith" spurred the enactment of a new hate speech law, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, specifically targeting blasphemy offensive speech on the grounds of one's religion.

In Canada, when the Western Standard magazine published the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, a human rights complaint was brought against the magazine's publisher, Ezra Levant. Alan Borovoy, a lawyer who had helped make the human-rights laws under which the complaint was made, stated that the laws had not at all been intended to be used in such a manner.[5] The complainant, Syed Soharwardy, later withdrew it, saying he had gotten a better understanding of freedom of speech and now thought he might be abusing the laws.[6]

When certain advocacy groups are unable to convince the government to censor content that they deem offensive, those groups often establish an "advisory board." These boards then advise like-minded people to avoid certain films, books, TV shows, etc. Sometimes these groups are relatively weak, so they come off as more annoying than ominous. Others make it their mission to influence public policy. Some religious organizations, however, have gone a step further, since most religious leaders have no qualms about bullying their followers into obeying their demands.

In the early 20th century, the Catholic Church established the Legion of Decency to "advise" parishioners on which movies to avoid at the risk of condemning their immortal souls to everlasting hellfire. No, really! Catholics were told that if they watched certain movies, they were committing a cardinal sin and that they would go to hell for willfully disobeying the Church. Even future Oscar winning films weren't spared the wrath of the Legion.[7]

Other such advisory boards include:

Some people who promote censorship aren't closet totalitarians. Sometimes they're just nuts.

See more here:
Censorship - RationalWiki

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