[governance] Bangladesh Govt blocks YouTube

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Sep 19 11:29, Chaitanya Dhareshwar (chaitanyabd at gmail.com) wrote:

> I think we all agree
>
> 1. Freedom of speech is important

Yes.

> 2. What is said must be carefully said - if it's likely to hurt the
> sentiments of the masses ("perceived compliance") something should be done
> to prevent that hurt sentiment - strongest being censorship (but what other
> measures could be used? - as Riaz said  'Reasonable' measures)

I'm not sure I agree with that. It isn't always possible or indeed
even useful to prevent hurting someone's sentiments in the first place,
and moreover attempts to do so can cause much bigger damage in the long term.
People believe in the strangest things and someone's sentiments can be
hurt by more or less anything, notably by any suggestion that some
of their ideas are wrong - and *everybody* has some wrong ideas.
(I'm sure I have, I just don't know which ones.)

But, I'm rather offended by the word "masses" there.
It's as if the people concerned were somehow subhuman, unable to
think for themselves, undeserving of human rights such as
Freedom of Expression - which includes the right to freely _receive_
information, in order to judge it for themselves.

If you argue "masses" should not hear about or see something like the
video in question, that they would be better of not knowing about it,
you are in effect saying they should not be granted full human rights
because they're incompetent to handle them.

I would have to agree, however, if your suggesting _their governments_
may think like that and are thus likely to resort to censorship unless
some easier ways are available, as suggested by your point 4 below.

Also, with all that said, I appreciate the need to strive for more
courteous ways of arguing over disagreements and would very much like
to seek any non-violent, not-government-enforced means to encourage such.
And "reasonable measures" to reduce hurting people's sentiments
unnecessarily sounds good.

> 3. Service providers like youtube (google) that have a large reach and huge
> client base should consider possible methods to prevent hate/racist/etc
> messages (measures werent mentioned - we could work on this)

I could agree with that, although it depends on the details -
I'm not sure we can come up with anything really useful.

> 4. Governments need to know there are measures (point 2 & 3) that can be
> used without opting for censorship - as Faisal said we need to do our part
> on this or Governments will probably opt for blanket censorship

Sigh. I must concede you could be right there,even though there's
a strong stench of "realpolitik" in there that makes my stomach turn.
But I'm old enough to know that compromises are sometimes necessary,
and could support something based on that notion.
Again, details are crucial.

> 5. Violence and censorship are not viable solutions - the damage is just
> too great

Full agreement here.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen

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