Is This Censorship?

[Tace]

March 18, 2007 -- NEW YORK (World News Trust) -- The URL for the World News Trust web site has been blocked from the following services:

MSN Live Search

Digg

World News Trust management is working to see why the WNT url has been blocked from these services, and to remove the blocks.

If the World News Trust web site is not available on your favorite search engine or social bookmarking network, please contact Francis Goodwin, WNT managing editor, immediately: [e-mail]

LINK:

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php

[whistle]

1. Well, censorship comes in all sorts of forms and purposes...

....pick the one you think applies in your example and then a discussion can follow.

<snip>
Definitions of censorship on the Web:

censoring: counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy

censoring: deleting parts of publications or correspondence or theatrical performances
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Censorship is the systematic use of group power to broadly control freedom of speech and expression, largely in regard to secretive matters. Sanitization (cleaning or decontamination) and whitewashing (from whitewash) are almost interchangeable terms that refer to particular acts or campaigns of censorship or omission which seek to "clean up" the portrayal of particular issues and facts which are already known, but which may conflict with a presented point of view.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

broadly, any government restrictions on speech or writing; more precisely, government restrictions on forms of expression before they are disseminated
www.imuna.org/c2c/app_a.html

The act of hiding, removing, altering or destroying copies of art or writing so that general public access to it is partially or completely limited. Contrast with bowdlerization. Click here to download a PDF handout discussing censorship in great detail. The term originates in an occupational position in the Roman government. After the fifth century BCE, Rome commissioned "censors. ...
web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_C.html

The practice of suppressing a text or part of a text that is considered objectionable according to certain standards.
www.medialit.org/reading_room/article565.html

Changes required of a movie by some person or body other than the studio or the filmmakers, usually a national or regional film classification board. See also certificate.
www.teako170.com/glossary2.html

A film for theatrical release is reviewed by a film classification board which may request certain changes before release will be allowed, or allowed under a certain age rating.
www.soyouwannasellascript.com/source/glossary.cfm

System of controls by which the circulation of any printed matter or the production of any play or film is prohibited unless official permission is granted. Until 1695, the English Crown claimed a monopoly of all printing presses. (Back in 1644 poet John Milton made his speech 'Areopagitica' to parliament for the 'Liberty of Unlicensed Printing'. ...
www.embassy.org.nz/encycl/c1aencyc.htm

Action taken to prevent others from having access to a book or information; a public objection to words, subjects and/or information in books, films, and other media with the idea of depriving others from reading or viewing them.
www.odl.state.ok.us/servlibs/l-files/glossc.htm

the means of keeping unpleasant (or unsociable) desires out of consciousness. Censorship is circumvented through dreams, parapraxes (or "slips of the tongue"), word association, and figures of speech.
www.geneseo.edu/~easton/humanities/Freud.htm

Decisive acts of forbidding or preventing publication or distribution of media products, or parts of those products, by those with the power, either economic or legislative, to do so.
freespace.virgin.net/brendan.richards/glossary/glossary.htm

something that is meant to prevent free expression
encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861632117/muzzle.html

[Tace]

3. Basically Unintentional

I'm under the impression that in both cases here, WNT just got caught in a kind of filter. I'll work to get the blocks removed.

In the case of MSN Live Search, a WNT headline of several weeks ago: XXX-Rated Hot Monkey Love (Mogambo Guru), may have got us shunted off to X-Rated land or something in the MSN Live Search taxonomy.

In the case of Digg, it's a community. Digg blocked Digging of WNT stories after a member complained about WNT after I Dug a story that suggests we consider outlawing the Republican Party. Coincidence? Nah.

[Skinner]

2. Yes, it is censorship.

But I have a feeling that by asking "Is this censorship" you may have been trying to ask something else: "Is this legal?" The answer to that question is yes, it is legal. Private websites have the right to include or exclude whatever content they want.

[Tace]

4. Sure -- Yet We're Aiming For Journalistic Excellence

It may not be apparent from looking at the WNT site, but we're aiming for the highest standards of journalistic excellence. I'm sort of miffed, but undaunted. : )

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

5. Ok, so it's censorship.

The next question is:

Why? It's not as if we are dealing with pr0n on WNT.

[ellisonz]

6. You said prOn!

:spray:

:rofl: