Frankly, I don't feel upset by the prospect of such a heavyhanded censorship.... After all, it's just the extension of the state's force monopoly into cyberspace. Remember back in 1992, after the LA riots, the local authorities enforced a curfew upon the city.
Actually, I'm much more concerned about a stealth, selective censorship of maverick opinions/news. For instance, the recent lawsuit against Yahoo! in France is a blatant infringement of free speech. Oh sure, it's shocking to learn that Yahoo!'s French portal offers an access to a cybershop for amateurs/buyers of Nazi gizmos and WWII gear.... So we've got a prominent anti-racist French NGO (MRAX?) launching a dramatic campaign against yet another Yank outfit that is sullying France's cyberlandscape with Nazi propaganda --fine!
However, the problem with that kind of moral censorship is that although we all know where and when it's started, we never know where and when it'll stop. And, as a far-left nut myself, I know what I'm talking about! Belgium had a similar precedent a few months back: a judicial police officer with far-right leanings used to display his racist trash over the internet. Obviously the guy got sued by Belgium's Comité pour l'égalité des chances and a Belgian court sentenced him to a $2,500(?) fine and a reprimand or something... Again, I cannot but be pleased with the outcome of that "cybercrackdown" against Neo-nazis and other far-rightist loonies.
However, hindsight tells me that Europe's bourgeoisie has always felt more threatened by another ideological foe --the far-left and the anarchist crowd. Obviously, at this point, it'd be quite premature and very un-PC for any European establishment to run down on the "cyberleft" head-on. Hence the swing-by tactics that consists of exposing the far-right bugbear first and, building up on a favorable momentum, deflecting public opprobrium towards the leftist fringe, in the second stage.
Gus. |
