there CAN be if bills are passed
though there will always be ungoverned deepweb

Quote from Automaton

I believe they're all part and parcel of the same thing: control. The internet is an open highway of information that governments see as unruly, because let's face it, there's no policing on the internet, there CAN'T be. Not only that, but there shouldn't be.

You say that as if control in an inherently bad thing.

Quote from Myself

You say that as if control in an inherently bad thing.

why would government control over the internet be a good thing?
unless you want to be like china

Do the Chinese have to deal with adbots and goatse?

I guess there's not much of an actual debate to be had then, because I would respond to that: no, but that's a bad thing. People can argue all they want that control is necessary and good, but I view liberty and freedom as the ultimate good in this world so not much can break that barrier.

Better get rid of them policemen and silly laws then.

There should be laws and punishment for breaking laws, when did I ever say otherwise? Liberty is breached when someone else breaches your liberty, so there should be ways to prevent that. That, and any laws that are necessary for society to function at a basic level, is about as far as I want any "policing" to go, however.

Freedom isn't good in itself; it's good because it leads to happiness. Every time you act freely you are doing what you want to do, which increases your happiness pretty much by definition. The best place to see this is in a free market economy - every time someone buys something both the buyer and the seller end up better off, otherwise the trade wouldn't take place.

So generally yes, freedom is good, however it is not intrinsically good. It's perfectly justifiable to restrict freedom if it leads to a better outcome overall. Would you rather have the choice between eating shit or vomit, or be forced to eat a chocolate bar? Laws are an example of freedoms being restricted to protect greater happiness, not to protect other people's liberty. The ban on fox hunting, for example, makes animal rights idiots happy but doesn't give anyone any additional freedoms. Copyright law doesn't protect the freedom of the artists - it protects their wealth (and therefore their happiness because money=happiness as we well know).

In the case of restricting freedom on the internet, I really don't see how you can want to live in a world with goatse over one without. I can see why you may not want to give the power of censorship to the government but if we restrict our thought experiment entirely to the question of with-or-without goatse it seems clear that you're better without. No one gets as much benefit from posting it as other people lose from looking. (Actually I'm not 100% on that. Depends on the person who's seeing it and how well they take a joke. But let's say for the sake of argument that there is something horrible to post. It's probably some kind of gore.)

To clarify, I'm saying that the principle of internet censorship is sound but I'm making no judgement on whether any government could actually do it right in practice. I'm guessing they couldn't.

I do agree that freedom isn't intrinsically good, but it makes people happy, which is good. The analogy of the shit and sick vs chocolate isn't really correct, because that's changing what is allowed, not expanding the definition. I would rather live in a world where you can choose to either eat sick, shit or chocolate rather than just chocolate. In this case, the freedom doesn't make me more happy, but as an ideological choice I understand that 0.0001% of the population might enjoy sick and therefore there is an overall increase in happiness from more freedom.

I can't see how you can prefer neoliberalism over, say, communism, and yet prefer the authoritarian (for example with goatse) over the libertarian. I always run into this issue with conservatives, and I can never understand how those 2 views can coincide. Clearly free or partially-free markets don't cause more happiness than communism would IN THEORY (note, not in practice, I know communism hasn't worked). A whole country moderately living vs the unhappy poor and the happy rich, it seems to me in this case the "better" option is communism. However, both me and you don't like that idea. I don't like that idea because it eliminates freedom, along with the other reasons always stated such as competition breeding innovation etc etc. The point is, if you go by happiness as you said, a free market is a worse market. I don't, therefore, see how you can say on one hand that a liberal market is better because it's more free, and yet the social sphere needs control. It's what confuses me about right-wing, authoritarian values; they seem internally incoherent.

What I'm suggesting is not ultimate freedom, it's freedom wherever possible. Freedom almost always equals greater happiness, which is why I stick to the idea of "if a problem can be solved by giving the individual more freedom, that is the best solution". Also, I did say in my last post:
'Liberty is breached when someone else breaches your liberty, so there should be ways to prevent that. That, and any laws that are necessary for society to function at a basic level, is about as far as I want any "policing" to go, however.'
So, I'm not saying that laws should be entirely based on promoting freedom regardless of the outcome, I'm saying that in most cases more freedom IS a greater outcome. I'm not libertarian in the sense that I believe in some of the extremes of what some libertarians say, but I am in the sense that I feel that both the UK and the US (and probably most EU countries, I'm not sure), are far too authoritarian. Therefore, I consider myself a libertarian in comparison to the main political parties. For instance, both the labour and conservative stance on drugs is zero tolerance and non-acceptance, which I consider to be particularly authoritarian. However, that doesn't mean that I don't want there to be laws, I just think they should be only as restrictive as ultimately necessary for society to function well. We don't need drug laws for society to function, we don't need laws on internet censorship for society to function, we don't need laws on sex and marriage for society to function (unless it infringes on another's liberty and rights).

Finally, towards the argument against goatse: it's not as simple as you make out. Let's replace the example with child porn which is almost universally deemed as harmful. Yes, a world without it is a happier world for most people, but does that mean that the internet needs censorship? No. As I said, if there's a way to stop the issue by allowing more freedom, that should be the way forward. How about you simply ban child porn and enforce sentences upon those you catch WITHOUT having to invade everyone else's privacy in order to do so. It's sort of the same argument I use against drug control. Someone will say "if this person does drugs they could end up punching someone and that is why the drug should be banned". Well yes, but surely a better option is to simply ban punching people, and not ban the freedom to do so, because the larger proportion of those on drugs WON'T punch people, therefore you're doing more harm than good by punishing the majority for the minorities actions.

Quote from Automaton

How about you simply ban child porn and enforce sentences upon those you catch WITHOUT having to invade everyone else's privacy in order to do so. It's sort of the same argument I use against drug control. Someone will say "if this person does drugs they could end up punching someone and that is why the drug should be banned". Well yes, but surely a better option is to simply ban punching people, and not ban the freedom to do so, because the larger proportion of those on drugs WON'T punch people, therefore you're doing more harm than good by punishing the majority for the minorities actions.

The thing is, when you ban child porn/punching people you still need some form of monitoring to actually catch anyone.

It would be like my saying "No one can ever post in this thread again." And then never returning to check if anyone did because that would be an invasion of your liberty.

Quote from Myself

The thing is, when you ban child porn/punching people you still need some form of monitoring to actually catch anyone.

It should be down to individual sites to moderate it, and if the site is found to not be moderating it properly the site should be taken down. The question then is how can we see whether a site is moderating it, and that's easy enough to do without monitoring each individual and what they do.

How has cyber crime been stopped up to this point, without constant surveillance of each individual and their actions on their own PC? Continue doing that. You can't argue that it's not possible without monitoring everyone because clearly it is if that's what's been happening thus far in most circumstances.

Again, I understand concessions have to be made with freedom, I just think those concessions should be as limited as possible, in every sense of the phrase. Monitoring everyone's connections is not as limited as possible.

Quote from Automaton

It should be down to individual sites to moderate it, and if the site is found to not be moderating it properly the site should be taken down. The question then is how can we see whether a site is moderating it, and that's easy enough to do without monitoring each individual and what they do.

there is no way that will work, let alone stop cp at all. cp main distrib isn't through websites hosted on regular godaddy servers that can be moderated. that shit is on deepweb tor shit.

Quote from 2-D

there is no way that will work, let alone stop cp at all. cp main distrib isn't through websites hosted on regular godaddy servers that can be moderated. that shit is on deepweb tor shit.

Yes, I know. I'm not on about regulating the deepweb though, just the surface internet.

Maybe if it were proven that monitoring everyone's internet could stop cyber crime by 100% then I would consider it, and only CONSIDER. To me, not much is actually worth the monitoring, let alone petty cyber crime (and I don't care what anyone says, shit like CP and silk road is petty cyber crime).

Quote from Automaton

Maybe if it were proven that monitoring everyone's internet could stop cyber crime by 100%

better get rid of that police force since murder still happens