[Foundation-l] and what if...

[Todd Allen]

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 7:09 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Any society considering a Great Firewall of any sort is neither
>> democratic nor open, whether or not they periodically hold votes on
>> exactly who should implement bad ideas. We should not in any way
>> acknowledge or respect such, though we should help those who live
>> there and encourage and assist them in circumvention.
>
> Countries have laws. The state enforces those laws. That's one of the
> main purposes of having a state over anarchy. Censoring parts of the
> internet is pretty much the only way to enforce child pornography laws
> (when the sites are hosted abroad). I don't see anything undemocratic
> about that. It's a democratically elected government making the laws
> and those laws don't prevent free and fair elections, so it isn't
> undemocratic. (Of course, an semi-official and unaccountable agency
> like the IWF enforcing the laws is not a great way to go about it.)
>
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Yes, all states have laws. It is the content of those laws which
determines whether or not the state is a free and open society. One
may have a free and open society that is not an anarchy.

Prior-restraint censorship, or blocking people from seeing,
discussing, and thinking about (as opposed to performing) potentially
harmful actions make that answer a "no".

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.