Internet copyright censorship is outgrowth of 1500's policy

[dixiegrrrrl]

Excellent short article puts current internet censorship in a new light.

Many proponents of the copyright monopoly falsely state that it was created in 1710.
That’s not true; it was merely re-enacted in that year.
It was created in 1557 as a censorship instrument to suppress political dissent.

When the printing press hit Europe, royalty and clergy panicked.

All of a sudden, they had lost the gatekeeper position of determining what culture and knowledge was available to the masses, and by extension, lost control of the political discourse of their time.

At the time, different regimes reacted differently to the threat. France reacted by banning book shops altogether and banning the use of the printing press under penalty of death. The ban was utterly ineffective. (Yes, you read that right: the penalty for unauthorized copying has been escalated as far as the death penalty, still without effect.)

http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-monopoly-was-created-as-a-censorship-instrument-and-is-still-used-as-one-130901/

[TreasonousBastard]

1. While historically probably true...

there are many things from the 1500's that exist now in an entirely different context.

As it stands now, and has for years, copyright simply shows ownership the way patent rights or a sales receipt do. Is it abused? Of course, but what isn't...

The answer is not to eliminate a thing that defines a right, but to fix it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. The perspectie the article takes

is that the current copyright issue is really a form of censorship.
Right now, the public issue is copyright versus piracy.
But in the process of that issue, copyright police organizations are pushing for spyware in browsers,
for search engines to not show certain searches based soley on what the copyright police tell them is a "bad" domain.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. That might be "overreaction" but...

censorship is another thing-- the deliberate attempt to hide or destroy particular ideas and remove all access to them.

This search activity would make them more difficult to find, but wouldn't make the words themselves illegal.

After all is said and done, I'll agree that large companies are using the copyright laws for their advantage more than any ideal of free speech, still, actual censorship is a far darker thing and not that common in these parts. (Even though some school boards in the nether regions of the country are trying their best to keep it alive.)