This has just brightened up my day far too much.
Much gratitude to Unreasonable Faith for the heads up..
Browsing Posts in Ranting
But even if some people are offended, offence is not a sufficient reason for certain artistic and satirical forms of expression to be prohibited. A university should hold no idea sacred and be open to the critiquing of all ideas and ideologies.
- The London School of Economics Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society, as quoted by New Humanist, responding to demands by the LSE student union that they remove a Jesus & Mo cartoon from their Facebook page.
I was going to post some expanded thoughts on this, but it turns out that the National Secular Society has said it so much better: LSE Students Union “being manipulated by determined activists” over Mohammed cartoon
Now is probably a good time to mention that a demonstration in defence of free expression, prompted by the student controversies and organised One Law For All, is set to take place in London on 11 February.
I’m not a children/young adult author, but if the drop in my PLR loans reflects library closures, then we have just slammed the door in the face of a new generation of readers. I got my start reading fiction from my local library; the voracious reading habits of a bookish child aren’t easily supported from a family budget under strain from elsewhere during a time of cuts. I hate to think what the long term outcome of this short-term policy is going to be, but I don’t believe any good will come of it.
Rather fittingly – and as if to prove my point – my human rights were quashed by a person demonstrating one of the effects of sharia law; the threat of violence for criticising religion.
- Ann Marie Waters who was due to speak discussion of Islamic law at a London university on Monday. This discussion was abandoned after a mindless thug threatened the attendees and some students who happened to be in the foyer.
Alcohol was banned at Brazilian football matches in 2003 in an attempt to tackle violence between rival football fans. But with the country hosting the 2014 World Cup, Fifa is demanding that this ban be lifted.
Initially, I was a little confused as to why Fifa would be so worried about football fans’ right to get bladdered. Then I read this:
Brewer Budweiser is a big Fifa sponsor.
That clears up my question, and it also suggests a solution. Why can’t Fifa and Brazil agree to maintain the ban on beer, but allow the sale of Budweiser and other soft drinks?
Rhys Morgan is an intelligent and articulate teenager and someone who impressed many with his work in publicising Stanislaw Burzynski‘s fradulent alternative medicine practices. Last week the University College London Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society were told that they should remove an image, taken from the cover of a Jesus and Mo book, from their Facebook page for their weekly pub meet.
Rhys, along with many others, used the same image on his Facebook page in a show of solidarity for their cause. He left the picture up for about a week, then changed it back and went on with his life.
Until today. Someone who is a Muslim discovered the picture and found it offensive. He politely requested I remove the image -
“… just a kind request to either hide it or completely delete the picture…”
- a request I declined because I do not follow Islamic scripture or rules.
At this point, all hell broke loose and he found himself on the receiving end of a stream of threats and abuse. Then his school stepped in… and threatened to expel him.
So here’s the picture in question:
And I think the head at Rhys’s sixth form college should sit down and think long and hard about why he is so keen to side with a bunch of bullies.
And, for the last word on SOPA, here’s a copyright infringing YouTube video that I found via Nina Paley.
The Day the LOLcats died
The supporters of SOPA, and it’s Senate sister, PIPA claim that it will protect content industries. Tim O’Reilly very effectively takes this argument apart.
At O’Reilly, we have published ebooks DRM-free for the better part of two decades. We’ve watched the growth of this market from its halting early stages to its robust growth today. More than half of our ebook sales now come from overseas, in markets we were completely unable to serve in print. While our books appear widely on unauthorized download sites, our legitimate sales are exploding. The greatest force in reporting unauthorized copies to us is our customers, who value what we do and want us to succeed. Yes, there is piracy, but our embrace of the internet’s unparalleled ability to reach new customers “though it may not be perfect still secures to authors more money than any other system that can be devised.”
These bills are designed to protect companies that are unable – or unwilling – to respond to current market demands. Any law that tries to protect unrealistic business models is, inherently, a bad law.
I am aware that SOPA has been shelved. But being shelved is not the same as being killed. And PIPA is still working its way through the Senate legislative process.
I said yesterday that this site is going dark on Wednesday, as is Pulpmovies, in support of the Stop SOPA campaign. This is still going to happen.
Update
It turns out that SOPA has just been unshelved.
On January 18th, between 08:00 and 20:00 UTC, this little corner of the internet will be joining Identi.ca, Boing Boing, Rasberry Pi, and many others in an internet blackout in protest of the Stop Online Privacy Act proposed in the US Congress and its corresponding Senate bill, Protect IP.
This is a badly drafted bill, promoted by people who don’t understand its impact for the benefit of people who don’t care about your freedoms. It is so widely cast and so badly worded that it will limit what you can say online, regardless of whether you are in the US or not.
You can find more information on the SOPA/PIPA bills, and how they affect you whether or not you live in the USA, at americancensorship.org. And I hope that if you run any sort of Web service or publishing platform, you will join this blackout.
© 2005 - 2012 Paul Pritchard Original content licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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