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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985

I think you are holding far too strict a definition of the word related to "transmission". If I am prevented from reading data I want to read, because some entity has decided they don't want me to read it, how is that not censorship?

Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway? Looking up nearly every form of the word 'censor' I can think of, nothing speaks specifically to the transmission of ideas. Rather, every definition I can find that makes sense focuses on deletion.

You could even argue that anti-virus is a form of voluntary censhorship.

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Come on, whitelist the folder where you keep your keygens, and windows defender won't interfere.

"Censorship, the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good" (Britannica). Voluntarily enabling a program to filter incoming data for personal convenience and safety is the opposite of the censorship. Like following self-imposed rules and restrictions is not a lesser freedom.

For less tech savvy users wiping keygens might be a safer default approach. I am pretty sure that keygens are an attack vector.

That will work... until you plug that drive into a fresh OS. Or you reformat and forget to unplug the drive before you set up the whitelist. Or it's spotted on a network drive by another PC running Windows Defender.

The filesaä are quarantined, not removed. You can restore them on the other OS as well.

> If I am prevented from reading data I want to read... how is that not censorship?

Of course it's censorship, they're preventing it from being transmitted to you. That's what I said.

> Also, where are you even getting that defintion anyway?

Literally the first sentence of the Wikipedia article [1]:

"Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information."

Speech and communication are transmission. There's no such thing as speech or communication with only a single party involved, as generally understood.

And no -- anti-virus is not voluntary censorship because it's not censorship at all. It's protection from harm, not a shield from comunicative ideas. If anti-virus were "voluntary censorship" then locking your home from burglars would be too. And that twists the word beyond any recognizable or useful meaning.

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

Oxford Languages defines censorship as "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."

Mirriam-Webster defines a censor as "a person who supervises conduct and morals," adding a subdefinition as "an official who examines materials (such as publications or films) for objectionable matter." The relevant definition for "censorship" simply points at the word "censor," so it was not useful for my argument.

In any case, I think wiki is not 100% right according to the actual language authorities. MS deliberately categorizes otherwise-harmless piracy-related software as deletion-worthy, and that isn't censorship? When they clearly have a conflict of interest in that some of that software represents a direct threat to their revenue stream? C'mon dude.

> And no -- anti-virus is not voluntary censorship because it's not censorship at all. It's protection from harm, not a shield from comunicative ideas. If anti-virus were "voluntary censorship" then locking your home from burglars would be too. And that twists the word beyond any recognizable or useful meaning.

And what exactly is harm? Microsoft is making subjective judgements, which can not help but be political. Microsoft has decided that historical and obsolete keygens and ansi art are harmful. It would not surprise me if they deemed software to circumvent obsolete abandonware encryption harmful as well, since it violates the DMCA.

A better analogy would be if you let a third party security company examine the items in your home and remove what they deemed to be "harmful" to you.

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