Links

I realize I’ve been considering censorship from the wrong end: I’ve been thinking of censorship as the act of either a government or a large corporation to suppress speech of individuals. Censorship, however, operates on a much smaller level than that as well – it operates at the organizational level, where “the boss” silences expression which is not in line with the norms of the group. This was within an email exchange, wherein they told me they were “shocked” that I’d post recordings of our choir performances when I’d been told that the musician’s union prohibited such recordings (they record the performances themselves – I’ve seen them do so – but apparently it’s against the rules for anyone else to do so). We’ll not go into how 1) there IS no content posted by me at this moment, nor 2) the fact that search engines cache all sorts of things – those are mere details, and aren’t really what’s made me consider this as censorship operating on a micro scale, as opposed to that imposed by governments or media companies.

We tend to think about censorship in very broad strokes, but it’s far more ubiquitous than we realize. It’s an issue of power, and control, and authority. It’s about silencing those who are not just the minority voices, but about silencing those who have less power within whatever perceived power structure that is in place. It’s about maintaining the status quo, really. It’s social control at its most crass and medieval.

There are intersections, in this case, with copyright … which I’m not going to examine right now. I’m still angry about the idea that I’m being subjected to censorship – that my voice can be threatened by someone. I do not give in to this type of thing as there is NO LEGAL BASIS FOR SUPPRESSING MY VOICE (or my recordings). But the social creature says to give in to the voice of authority, and that there is an implicit threat in being told to do something by someone who has set themself up as someone “in charge.” That threat – that exercise of control – is what censorship is about. It’s not just about the silencing of voices – that’s just the end result. It is exercising control over other beings whom one imagines to be somehow inferior, and that is why I resist it so furiously.

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Links

And now for the news. SOPA / PIPA / ACTA seem to have calmed down somewhat, but I suspect that they’ve just been driven underground a bit and that we’ll see some new form of them soon. We’re still heavy on copyright / patent this week, but I’m glad that most of the furor has died down. Privacy is always going to be a large section here, but this week it’s some new revelations about companies spying on smart-phone users, so at least have a peruse of the section. And, if you don’t read any of the rest, please do read How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did – I’ve spoken about the value of data mining before, but this article really explains what it’s all about and why it’s a bit creepy.

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Links

This week’s links seem to be about copyright and censorship, and it’s started me wondering whether there’s much of a difference: one stops speech for political reasons, the other for profit … but they both seem to be accomplishing much the same thing, and both seem to violate people’s rights in much the same manner. As always: if you’ve a particular area related to any of those I’m already following, do let me know and I’ll see about including some links for your particular area of interest.

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Links

Today’s links are mostly about SOPA / PIPA. Who knows where it’ll all end up, but I guess we’ll know sooner or later whether the internet will be censored by the US government. Of course, that’s what everybody’s talking about, but it’s not necessarily the most important bit of legislation that’s under consideration. Have a read of Elsevier = Evil to get an earful.

With the PhD coming to a close, I suppose I’m wondering what’s next. In that vein, I had a nightmare that I went to work for Google, and it was just like high-school, with all of the cliques and cool kids and snobbery. How ironic that this article should show up to confirm that it would, indeed, be a nightmare: What It’s Really Like to Work at Google.

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Links

Hope you all had a good holiday, and are ready to get back to whatever it is you’re up to. 7 days from now I’ll have had my viva and will be contemplating revision, most likely.

Not much in the links these past few weeks – it appears that the only thing going, really, has been SOPA. I wonder if anybody’s making money off of the circus that is the American Legislative System. Really: they’re such a farce with this, it’s unbelievable. Of course, that seems to be an underlying theme in US Politics these days.

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Links

There aren’t many happy links this week, unfortunately. Perhaps I need to slow down on paying attention to the censorship news, and the copyright / patent news. Either that or I’m going to have to rename this section “dark links” rather than just “links.” I need to add some more positive technology feeds to my reader, and perhaps drop a few of those which are focused on security, information law, and hacktivisim. I don’t know, though, because those areas are of interest to me, and they’re also very important not only to me but to the world as a whole. Will give it some thought. Meanwhile, here’re your links for the week.

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