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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

> the blog Zerohedge and video hosting platform Liveleak.

Let's say I get why they'd block 4chan and 8chan, but blocking a blog is just over the top. Liveleak I also half-understand, but I also don't approve of it, for a while it was one of the best online video resources on the atrocities committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, just hiding our unwanted images under the rug won't help much.

Later edit: For example videos of the Tikrit massacre [1] are only available on Liveleak (I'm talking of the "mainstream" web), YouTube has nothing on it. It is my very strong opinion that we need these images to remain in the public psyche so that we'll try our best not to make the same mistakes again, and by censoring access to this kind of videos we're not helping with any of that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Speicher_massacre

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You "half understand" liveleak and "you get" 4chan and 8 chan but should that be the basis for law and what thought is acceptable in a free society?

Do we really want some political committee sitting around and arguing the merits of these people's writing? What about weird kink websites? What about radical political blogs that advocate for policy you find dangerous? You may find some of these things abhorrent but there are almost certainly people who would find certain things you believe abhorrent.

Any time you get into individual selection of what is acceptable thought and what isn't you are crossing a very dangerous line. Even if the initial things that are deemed unacceptable seem reasonable.

Edit: Telco monopolies relating to infrastructure are essentially state actors. There is a big difference here between a Telco refusing to route traffic and a bookstore deciding what content to carry.

We are talking about Australia. They already essentially have a political committee that decides whether any given videogame is acceptable for import.

> blocking a blog is just over the top

I'm a fierce fighter for the First Amendment and its free speech protections. But such absolutism around free speech has its drawbacks. Hate speech runs wild. Incivility is given a safe harbor in which to breed. Some really awful sides of humanity can come uncomfortably close to one's day-to-day life. But it's a trade-off our country debated, debates and continues to make.

Australia hasn't made the same trade-off. Australians repeatedly elect representatives who pass into law measures I'd consider draconian if raised in America. But Australia isn't America. And within a band, in which both America and Australia lie, there are multiple optima balancing freedom and stability.

One mans hate speech is another mans freedom.

I'm a gay male, but I'm very reluctant to ban 'hate speech' - I'm worried that such laws could be used against other (as yet unknown) marginalized peoples in the future, if such laws, or rather the concept of such laws existed, they could have been used to suppress our struggle for rights. We, for example said some pretty sharp things about religion for example, which in other countries would be prohibited speech, similarly, we were also decidedly uncivil in our struggle for civil rights, so has every successful civil rights movement.

Any law used to defend the now status quo, can be used to prevent that from changing in the future, even to welcome other groups under the tent. Simply put, you got to the top, don't pull up the ladder behind you.

That said, I wouldnt object to broadening what constitutes a call to action to include doxxing and 'encouraging internet vigilantism'.

"I'm a fierce fighter for the First Amendment and its free speech protections. But..." Pretty much everyone who says "but" after a statement like that isn't one, at all.

They're just run-of-the-mill corporate cowards who are terrified of being seen as not doing enough. Screw them.

Agreed. It's a longsword where a scalpel is wanted. This is the risk of network-level censorship: too much restriction.

... on the other hand, it puts pressure on Liveleak to take initiative to clean its house, and the only tool the telcos have here is a longsword.

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