South African censorship

[Valerion]

I know this has been discussed before. But I find this quote by the EFF (not the political party) to be quote direct.

Only once in a while does an Internet censorship law or regulation come along that is so audacious in its scope, so misguided in its premises, and so poorly thought out in its execution, that you have to check your calendar to make sure April 1 hasn't come around again. The Draft Online Regulation Policy recently issued by the Film and Publication Board (FPB) of South Africa is such a regulation. It's as if the fabled prude Mrs. Grundy had been brought forward from the 18th century, stumbled across hustler.com on her first excursion online, and promptly cobbled together a law to shut the Internet down. Yes, it's that bad.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/a ... uth-africa

[SnowDragon]

Gotta say, I despise close mindedness like this (Not you, Val, you are the opposite of close minded). Prudish, close minded and ignorant fools really need to go hide in thier little corner and stay there.

[Ivic_Wulfe]

Signed the petition, this is bloody insane

[Valerion]

An online petition would get ignored. The way to do it is to make it so they cannot legally ignore you.

http://fpb.org.za/media-centre-fpb/pres ... e-extended

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From another forum:
Please also send a comment to the FPB at policy.submissions@fpb.org.za, here is a template:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I, as a citizen of South Africa, am responding to the invitation for public comment on the FPB's draft Online Regulation Policy (ORP).

I wish to clearly state that I do not support this policy in any form, or any other policy in which the FPB asserts the right to arbitrarily classify or control the distribution of online content. The ORP will negatively influence my right to freedom of speech and place an unreasonable burden on ISPs, content providers and creators, thereby worsening the digital divide between rich and poor as well as damaging our creative and ICT sectors.

I call for the FPB to scrap the ORP and focus on educating children and parents on the dangers of the internet and how to browse safely.

Yours faithfully,

Piet Pompies

[SnowDragon]

Sent. It's really simple - If you scared of the wierd corner of the internet, stay out of it. If you think that some guy wielding a chainsaw is offensive, don't watch the movie. Forcing your dumbass views on someone else is wrong.

[Ivic_Wulfe]

Sent as well!

[DanLeo427]

Sent... Just three words come to mind on this...
WHAT THE FUCK!?

oh and good luck.

[Leeward]

Sent. Hopefully getting people to spam them will achieve something.

[Franky]

All the furry sites should be safe.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

All the furry sites should be safe.

No, cause they can easily argue that content on a furry site is a publication distributed in South Africa through the internet.

[Franky]

Or they can tax it. Zuma needs a new bar alongside his swimming pool.

[SnowDragon]

Heh. I guess that will bring back massive LAN "swap-meets"

[Sev]

Is it just me, or does such a pie in the sky idea seem hopelessly unenforceable? If government bodies were actually efficient and effective, then I would be worried, but the FPB seems just as clueless as the rest.

[Titanreaper]

I honestly don't see how this can be legal since the internet is public and may not be governed by anybody. the fact that they are doing this says to me that 1) they are illegally governing the internet and its content by deciding what is and is not acceptable according to them thereby denying people the freedom to speak and express themselves freely. 2) they are looking at more methods to use us as cash cows since if I am not mistaken having to purchase a license to distribute content that doesn't belong to them for example lets say I make a music video using world of warcraft they may not charge me or force me to to buy a permit since the content does not belong to them and blizzard can also sue them for profiting off of their content illegally.
in my oppinion its bullshit and I would gladly rally people to take class action against them should they succeed, its a violation of my constitutional right.

[KinkInZA]

more Communist propaganda comes to mind there is too much truth being served about the current state of our country and these people want to limit it so that the rest of the world would only receive their propaganda about apparently so much better they are than apartheid was damn fools .
the draft appears to me to be very familiar saw this somewhere before. that's right go look at the Chinese version can swear these are the same type of controlling statements to only implement propaganda and no free truth.

[Animew]

haven’t they been trying to do this for 6 years now? i just hope when zuma makes himself the monarch of south africa he doesn't mess with my porn, i mean seriously... i'll put up with economic enslavement and abuse but when they mess with my porn, ████ is going down! i'll ████ing ████ them the ████ up with my enormous ████ ████!... ████!

[Helios_phi]

*Nice

[Fluke]

Minister of Internet Censorship walks into his lavish office, 2021. He sits down on his ivory chair and takes a sip of his anti-racism Mu-tea to curb all the hate which is directed to him because he is black - not because he is useless. Duh.

He smirks as he loads up Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7, he begins his cleansing. Aided by a helpful check box of for reasons for cleansing. "Offends my racial right, Offends my cultural rights as a black person, Not South African content and his favourite: Other."

He begins to load up his favourite cleansing site, YouTube. Checkbox at the ready he browses humorous cat videos while heartily belly laughing. Immediately, he recognizes the threat this could have on future development on racial culture and deems it to be "blatantly racist". Okay, next video. "100 Hilarious Car Rage Videos". Obviously we don't have such horrible things as accidents in South Africa, nor road rage. We are a peace-loving nation with 0 problems. The Government told him this, it must be true. He censors the video for false accusations against the peace.

etc.

[SnowDragon]

Agree on the enforcement. How are they gonna enforce something like this? Put the content in jail? xD

[Asbjorn-phoenix]

Agree on the enforcement. How are they gonna enforce something like this? Put the content in jail? xD

just like trying to enforce E-tolls they going to prosecute 80% of Gauteng motorists? The courts would be full for years...

[Fluke]

No, they'd simply do a Great-Firewall-of-China approach if they were truly serious about it. Just blocking content, but not actually punishing people who get through (unless they were majorly sharing it). And then just keep expanding their block list by any exceptions they catch.

Then we'd all have to use VPNs, and we all wouldn't be able to play games or watch YT.... eugh... they want to turn us into N.Korea lol.


Whats hilarious is that this will affect business the most, it actually won't go through unless they realise we will become a nation with nearly no international deals and no income.

[Adagio]

I just found THIS petition on AVAAZ...

[Leeward]

I just found THIS petition on AVAAZ...

1. They provide no links to where the FPB has published this proposed law.
2. It is written in a suspiciously alarmist tone, especially with that "48h" and "share this everywhere:"thing.
3. Internet petitions achieve absolutely nothing.

[Neon]

1. They provide no links to where the FPB has published this proposed law.
2. It is written in a suspiciously alarmist tone, especially with that "48h" and "share this everywhere:"thing.
3. Internet petitions achieve absolutely nothing.

I'm going to agree with Leeward on this. What great change has been accomplished with internet petitions? (Titanfall SA release aside)
Seriously?

[Valerion]

The time restrictions for commenting on this has ended anyway, so we'll see what good has been achieved.

Internet petitions have made differences, but not to the SA government.

<EDIT>That said ...
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/ ... tions.html
</EDIT>

[Fluke]

Internet censorship bill for South Africa has been approved by cabinet

What a joke. So much wrong with this I don't even want to begin to rant on this.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

It's a probably a safe bet that anything that's done "for the children" should be rejected immediately.

[Leeward]

[Linea]

"...ban...any online content that is ‘degrading’ or ‘promotes harmful behaviour...’"

Can the Fandom be construed, by overly-concerned nanny-state political bodies, to fall into these categories? Will the FPB issue an edict banning people from expressing their identification with animals? Will Zuma himself stand in from of parliament and explain?

This is so wide open to all sorts of horrible, horrible manipulation.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

Can the Fandom be construed, by overly-concerned nanny-state political bodies, to fall into these categories? Will the FPB issue an edict banning people from expressing their identification with animals? Will Zuma himself stand in from of parliament and explain?

This is so wide open to all sorts of horrible, horrible manipulation.

That's why people are upset.