Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/09/constitutional-monarchs-r-us.html
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Yeesh, that UK/PRC mashup flag is ugly.
the British Parliament, in a bid to cement its status as the decade’s most dysfunctional of all legislatures
You can’t seriously be suggesting that our Parliament, garbage though it is, is remotely a match for the U.S. Senate?
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The internet was fun while it lasted but we’re well along the way to splinternets.
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We better study up on VPNs and proxy servers.
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I wonder if, when the internet burns, we will be able to watch it on YouTube?
Is it just me, or does it feel to anyone else like all aspects of our lives are turning into a quagmire of fuckery?
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It’s things like this that make me almost think that the anarcho-primitivists are right.
Then I think about it a little bit more, and things aren’t that fucked up yet. It’s just a few individuals with a disproportionate amount of power, we can still fix it.
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People need to understand that all the harm that internet censorship laws are a feature, not a bug. They know they are lying to us, claiming to be protecting us from “harmful” content, when in reality they are really cracking down on opposition and dissent. Yet they don’t care that they are lying because there is nothing we can realistically do about it.
Basically;
“Yeah, we are going to take away your rights and we’re lying to you about why we are doing it. What are you going to do about it? Nothing, of course.”
We are witnessing the death of the internet as we know, being murdered in cold blood by authoritarian Governments that are supposed to be democracies, but have begun to aspire to be like China and North Korea, all to entrench it’s own power and to enrich the traditional media companies. This is nothing but a power grab and heist of wealth and rights, and I don’t think we have the power to realistically stop it.
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Good regulation requires both understanding the system you’re regulating and caring about the people impacted by the regulations.
In current political regulation of internet and tech we have neither
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Have you been keeping up with brexit lately?
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The problem with “endorsing some of the goals” of these proposals is that being a little bit censored is like being a little bit pregnant. Once you give someone the power to censor the internet, they will use that power for their own ends, and , if your interests are different from theirs, especially if you are part of a marginalized community, they will use it against you.
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S A M I Z D A T, comrade.
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I am surprised that the UK parliament have the spare time to think about this.
Yes.
They still haven’t let Theresa May stick any children in concentration camps, though no doubt she’d be all for it.
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On the bright side, in this legal climate it will be much easier to force Facebook and Twitter to censor hate speech. That will surely prevent someone like Trump from being elected again.
Yes, but how long will it take before our “democratic” governments ban VPNs? I doubt they’ll leave that gate open for long.
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I have speculated on the possibility of an encryption license before, and the major flaws with such an idea.
Because it is a bad idea I fully expect May to propose it as soon as we are out of the EU.
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She was putting kids in Yarl’s Wood when she was home secretary. Why do you think she wouldn’t do it now?
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Along the way, different constituencies have joined forces, alarmed by threats, some of which are grave (list of things Doctorow disapproves of) and some of which are parochial (list of things Doctorow doesn’t disapprove of).
Anyone can be a censor if the right buttons are pushed.
Common carriers, or publishers. There is no middle way.
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