How do you censor the digital world?
Can you censor the digital world? Is it right to even try to censor the digital
world?
In the 70s and 80s campaigners such as
Mary Whitehouse created movements such as the Student Christian Movement and Moral
Re-Armament. She led a crusade to clean-up TV. She founded the
National Viewers' and Listeners' Association and was a leading figure in the Nationwide Festival of Light. She did initiate
a successful private prosecution against Gay News on
the grounds of blasphemous libel, the first such case for more than fifty
years. But her often overzealous mission waned, alienated many and public
opinion accepted a more liberal approach. Malcolm Muggeridge’s TV attack on ‘The
Life of Brian’ Python film and at John Cleese and Michael Palin is another example
of the moral posturing of the time.
We now have the question of ebook
content and self-publishing and whether a combination of these is promoting and
selling pornographic e-books which feature incest, rape and bestiality
and the reaction of sites such as Amazon, Kobo, Nook and others?
In a somewhat kneejerk reaction WH Smith took its site down and publicly
stated this was with the sole aim of removing all abuse-themed ebooks. WH Smith
partners with Kobo in the UK. Kobo meanwhile announced it was, ‘working quickly
to review its catalogue and remove the content, authors and publishers in
question’. They were also, ‘evaluating new procedures to help ensure that this
type of content will not become available... in the future.’
Over the weekend US
retailing giant Barnes & Noble said offending titles were in the process of
being removed.
The questions are
not whether the books are self-published or ‘published’, graphic or textural,
but what is acceptable and what is not and how do you police abuse?
Some would suggest
that automated programmes can be used to screen offensive titles, metadata and
even the content itself, but what is offensive and once you draw a line in the
sand how do you later adjust it to match changing public values? What may have
been offensive 20 or even 10 years ago may be acceptable today and visa-versa.
Were ‘Lolita’, ‘Lady
Chatterley,’ ‘Tropic of Capricorn’ and others acceptable to the moral majority on
their release? Is ’50 Shades’ literature or soft porn? When does soft porn
become hard? Is the violence portrayed in some video games acceptable or over
the top? Are some of the Photographs of the likes of Newton, Mapplethorpe,
Akari etc art or pornography? How do you determine whether a picture or video
is abusive?
Words are just that
and without context in there are meaningless. So do we have contextual search engines
that determine what is good and what is evil? Is the answer binary, or are
there 50 Shades of pornography? Should all material have a rating? A chiili counter, one chilli denotes
with parents guidance and Five chillis, red hot and strictly adults only.
The previous owner
of my wife’s business, Bibliophile, was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications
Act for bringing into the UK a reprint of ‘The Amorous Illustrations of Thomas Rowlandson.’
The case was thrown out when it was revealed that the originals of many of the
pictures were in the Queen’s private library. ‘If it was good enough for her
Majesty, surely it was good enough for her subjects?’ was the killer remark.
Some would point to
China with its reported millions of internet state watchers aimed at blocking
and censoring unwanted material. Others would suggest that some governments are
taking the right steps to block sites promoting abusive materials. But the question
remains what is abusive and what is not?
The question of
self-publishing is frankly a red herring and after all there are significant
examples of similar materials that are ‘published.’
Finally, we must all
remember that there is always the ultimate censor - ‘off’ button.
