I’ve Moved!
November 20, 2008
So I’m sure that most people have noticed that the site has been offline for a few days. There’s a reason for that, which I will get to shortly. But first, let me just say this:
In fact, I am blogging at a new site I have just finished setting up: kennethhynek.net. A full explanation for the reasons behind the move can be found here
.
That said, this is not the end of Time Immortal. My wife Grace has expressed interest in taking over blogging at this domain, and I am working to make sure that she gets set up here as soon as possible.
Also, my profound apologies for the modification to the site face; the move was not as seamless as I would have hoped, and many of the image files for this theme, and in the gallery, were corrupted during the course of their evacuation from my previous web host’s servers. Until such time as I have repaired them, I’ve put a clean-looking template in place of the previous one.
Update: for the purposes of further traffic shaping, new posts from kennethhynek.net will be excerpted below. Full articles can be read at the new blog.
Richard Warman wants the CRTC to block American websites
March 5, 2008
Not all of them, admittedly — just the ones with which he personally disagrees.
I’ve written about how Richard Warman, the former Canadian Human Rights Commission staffer who is now the CHRC’s biggest customer for thought crime complaints, has tried to censor Canadian libraries in British Columbia and Ontario.
But the largest libraries in the world now, of course, are online. And defamation suits and human rights complaints — Warman’s preferred tools of Censorship — don’t work as well if the libraries and other websites in question are based in the United States. Their robust First Amendment means that U.S. defamation law is not an effective censorship tool, and that country does not — yet, at least — have anything as pernicious as Canada’s various thought crimes laws.
Well, if a Canadian can’t censor U.S. websites, can he get Internet companies here in Canada to block those U.S. sites from Canadian internet users, like Communist China does with politically incorrect sites? That’s exactly what Warman sought to do in an application to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
I’m not an expert in telecommunications law, but from what I gather, Canada’s big Internet companies like Rogers and Bell are governed by the Telecommunications Act (apparently little ISP’s aren’t). Section 36 of that Act specifically bans communication companies from interfering with content without government approval — and that includes censoring websites:
Except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.
Well, that’s what Warman — and the censors at the Canadian Jewish Congress — asked the Commission to do. In the written application to the CRTC filed by his lawyers, Warman asks not only for the CRTC’s “permission” under section 36 to ban two particular U.S. websites, but he also asks for:
Directions on procedure… whereby Canadian carriers and other interested parties can present their views as to whether the blocking of these URLs should be made a final order of the Commission and whether the blocking of these websites should be mandatory for all Canadian ISPs.
Say…isn’t that what the Chinese do, more or less? Oh, wait…yeah, it is, as Ezra points out above. Censorship, plain and simple.
But remember, O Reader…Richard Warman prefers that you not call him a censor! Okay, fine, whatever. Were the CRTC to ban access, within some or all of Canada, to certain American websites, that would, by definition, be an act of censorship. By what name, then, shall we call someone who lobbies for just such an action to take place?
