[comex]

Considering that the US has zero speech-related internet censorship, and the comparison is to a law banning sharing any news articles online and publishing any material opposing the government, I'd say the US still has a valid complaint here.

[jivatmanx]

Vietnam is a communist tyranny that simply applying existing laws and policies to a new medium, so this isn't really a change.

Economists prefer percentages to absolutes, and trends to isolated incidents. 9/11 has not only halted the long trend towards increasing freedom, but began a new and troubling trend of growing tyranny.

Perhaps the U.S. isn't overtly attacking press freedom, but the U.K. is, informs the U.S. before every incident, and the U.S. couldn't be happier.

[slacka]

Events like this are a reminder of why technology like Tor and I2P are so important. When I was working in China, I was surprised by the number of people that were aware of Tor and those that I introduced it to were thrilled to have their freedom back. In Thailand, I found it installed in Internet cafe's to access blocked sites.

[jawngee]

Tyranny is a bit overstated.

[wyager]

Said people in every historical state that was slowly sliding towards despotism.

[mpyne]

But on the other hand, making the U.S. congruent to every despotic state tends to cheapen the sacrifice of those who actually had to live (and die) under those despots, instead of sipping a venti espresso at Starbucks while typing away on their MacBook Pro.

[veidr]

Some people sip espressos in North Korea, too.

Meanwhile, we (Americans) have more people living in cages than North Korea, China, Iran, and Vietnam combined. Most of them citizens, incarcerated after being subjected to extremely dubious trials for crimes related to drugs -- and whoops, look at today's latest headline: Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove Eclipsing N.S.A.’s

Relatively free states slide morph into corrupt police states precisely when the people sipping coffee with their luxury computers refuse to notice it happening.

[mpyne]

> Relatively free states slide morph into corrupt police states precisely when the people sipping coffee with their luxury computers refuse to notice it

That's... at least mildly pretentious. What social ills are the brave bands of roving latté-sippers going to save the country from next? Anyways, history has shown that despots don't have to care about what the intelligentsia thinks.

[gizmo686]

I wouldn't say zero. Child pornagraphy and copyright infringement are still censored. (Admitadly, most copyright infringement is self sensored to assure DMCA compliance, but I still count that).

[Monotoko]

Child pornography makes sense though, I can't see any civilised society ever being okay with that because of the permanent harm it brings to those involved. The ban has been in place since before the Internet, and thus it was brought to the Internet too.

There needs to be rules, but they need to be sensible and not limit speech. The other side of that coin though is the laws against copyrighted material, most people don't care and download stuff illegally anyway.

I can't imagine lawmakers backing away from the Internet, and I don't really want them to because before you know it someone would be monetising child porn. No idea how you would even begin to solve the problem of balance though.

[gizmo686]

I do not want to enter into a discussion about the morality of child porn. However, regardless of you view on that, it is still a form of speech. US legal precedent explicitly allows for the limitations of speech under specific circumstances (such as intent and likelyhood to incite a crime, and malice with a reckless disregard to the truth). What is important to remember is that wheather we are censoring terrorist how-tos, child-porn, or political opponents we are still limiting speach.

[rdl]

Child pornography doesn't have a bright line, though. I don't think 16/18/21 are particularly different (I.e. societies could choose any of those). There still seems to be debate around the edges of simulated, simulated using real photos of non sexual underage people, self pics to other minors, etc. And IMO the bigger issue of knowing possession vs. it being totally radioactive.

[gizmo686]

>There still seems to be debate around the edges of simulated

Not just the edges. I've seen porn sites self censor obvious fictional porn depicting children, because of concern over hosting child porn.

[rdl]

The thing where Australia banned porn with smaller (A/B) breasted adult women because it "contributed to pedophilia" was amazing, too.

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, on the other hand, those things flow more freely in China.

[Shizka]

Of course it's a valid complaint. Just because the US has a number of, lets call them unfortunate, stances on the definition on freedom doesn't mean they can't make complaints. But you must admit that this does make them seem somewhat hypocritical?

[belorn]

You are free to any speech, so long it doesn't contain any videos of soldiers gunning down children from a helicopter, or you do not "encourage" copyright infringement, or post how to circumvent a lock on property you have bought, or enables gambling, or if it might look like one of the forbidden form of porn if you tilt the head on the side.

Then its DNS takedown time. Either by making sure that resolvers will lie, or removing it from the Internet on a US "because we say so" basis. No judge, no jury, no trial. Those stuff is only for "real" things, not virtual "sites" on the Internet.