Twitter Censorship: Choosing Half a Loaf?

"Twitter Switches on the Censors"
Alyssa Danigelis, Tech News, Discovery News (January 28, 2011)

"The social networking site Twitter finds itself between a rock and a hard place in foreign countries where speech isn't always free. On the one hand, Twitter's leadership doesn't want the whole site banned in those countries. On the other, what's a dictatorial government going to do with a social networking site that helps stir up civil dissent? The answer: Ban it. But that's not good for business.

"So the site that helped fuel the Arab Spring last year and briefly brought Iranian protests to the fore in 2009 just announced that it's going to start dancing with the censorship devil. In the past, if a tweet had to be removed from the site for legal reasons -- usually copyright infringement -- it was taken down universally. Now, the tweet can be taken down from one country and still seen by tweeters in other countries...."

'It can't happen here?' America has a pretty good track record for allowing citizens to voice opinions. McCarthyism and the heyday of political correctness are, in the Lemming's opinion, not examples of 'business as usual' in this country.

On the other hand, Congress almost took control of the comics industry. That was the early 1950s:

• "The Horror! Monster Comics that Scared Congress"
  (October 31, 2010)

'Public morals' might still work as an excuse to muzzle dissent: although the Lemming thinks that sort of censorship would now be packaged as 'saving the children.' We had a close call about a year ago, when controlling search engine results was marketed as "search neutrality."

This year, the line was "piracy." So far, Congress seems to have decided to wait until folks forget about SOPA and PIPA. Maybe the Lemming's being unfair.

"Different Ideas About ... Freedom"

"...'As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there,' the announcement from Twitter says.

"Any time a tweet is censored, the company says it will notify the person who tweeted it and describe the removal on a Twitter-specific section of ChillingEffects.org...."

There's a joke that was old when the Soviet Union turned into Russia, and a lot of smaller countries. Several, actually, but this one almost applies to Twitter and censorship:

An American and a Russian were comparing their countries. The American said his was better, because Americans have freedom of speech. "I could stand in front of the White House and say, 'the president is stupid!' "

"Ha," replied the Russian. "We also have freedom of speech! I could stand in front of the Kremlin and say, 'the American president is stupid!' "

Like Twitter said, some countries "have different ideas about ... freedom of expression."

Half a Loaf?

Ideally, no country's government would try to keep its citizens from voicing their opinions. But we don't live in an ideal world.

The Lemming thinks that the "half a loaf is better than none" principle applies here. Twitter is probably taking a sensible approach: allowing people in tightly-managed countries access to some service.

In the Lemming's opinion, folks are pretty good at communicating: even when their 'betters' don't want them to. 'Songs of the underground railroad' and spirituals may or may not have been a case in point. The lack of written evidence may be connected to the reason that "composer of jazz" is pretty close to being an oxymoron. And that's another topic.

Songs

Somewhere, some time since folks started working the bugs out using fire without killing themselves, there may have been a culture without music. If so, the Lemming suspects that they didn't last long: and left precious few traces. But that's just an opinion.

A fair number of folks have valued songs for over two dozen centuries:

"Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards."
Homer, The Odyssey (Greek epic poet (800 BC - 700 BC))

"Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable."
Samuel Johnson (English author, critic, & lexicographer (1709 - 1784))

Not everybody sees music quite the same way:

"The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.' "
Aaron Copland (US composer (1900 - 1990))

"A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it."
Sir Thomas Beecham (English conductor (1879 - 1961))

Wrenching himself back on-topic, the Lemming offers:

Freedom and Other Inconveniences

"The basis of a democratic state is liberty."
Aristotle, Politics (Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC))

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759 (US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790))

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791 (3rd president of US (1743 - 1826))

"If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other."
Carl Schurz (US (German-born) general & politician (1829 - 1906))

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered."
G. K. Chesterton (English author & mystery novelist (1874 - 1936))

"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech."
Justice Anthony Kennedy, in 91-155 (US jurist (1936 - ))

And that's yet another topic.

Related posts:

• "SOPA, PIPA, and a Disapproving Rabbit"
  (January 18, 2012)
• "Lemming Tracks: Internet Freedom; or 'Be Careful What You Wish For' "
  (April 19, 2011)
  Particularly
  • Freedom: Precious, and Easily Lost
• "Lemming Tracks: Egypt, Google Exec Wael Ghonim, and Freedom of Speech"
  (February 6, 2011)
• " 'Search Neutrality:' Deciding What We're Allowed to Find?"
  (January 22, 2011)
• "COICA: A Federal Official Deciding Who Gets to Stay Online"
  (November 19, 2010)

Thought for the Day: Astonish the Rest

A thought for the day:

"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain, via The Quotations Page

Lemming Tracks: Silence of the Poets

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of kumquats.

The poets taught in literature courses, anyway.

In the Lemming's experience.

A tip of the hat to G. K. Chesterton, whose observation the Lemming paraphrased. (May 31, 2009)

Not-entirely-unrelated posts:

• "Faces in the Street - a Chesterton Quote"
  (May 22, 2010)
• "Lemming Tracks: Chesterton Quotes on Bigotry and Lunatic Asylums"
  (January 16, 2010)
• "Kumquats Revealed!"
  (September 20, 2009)
• "No Such Thing as an Uninteresting Subject: a Thought for the Day"
  (August 22, 2009)
• "A Thought for the Day"
  (May 31, 2009)

A Thought for the Day: About Appearances

"Appearances aren't everything, they just look like they are."
Heard on the radio, here in central Minnesota, by a member of the Lemming's family.

A Thought for the Day: About Following Your Dream

"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later."
Mitch Hedberg, Mitch All Together, (American comedian (1968 - 2005))
via The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day: About Telekinesis

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
Kurt Vonnegut, US novelist (1922 - 2007), via The Quotations Page

Commentary would, in the Lemming's view, be superfluous.

A Thought for the Day: About Boyhood and Measles

"Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious."
P. G. Wodehouse, Uneasy Money, via The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day: About Money

"If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone."
Benjamin Franklin: US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790), via The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day: About Memory

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward."
Lewis Carroll, The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day: Something Revolutionary

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826), The Quotations Page

The Lemming didn't think much of lockstep conformity in the '60s - and still doesn't.

A Thought for the Day: About Cheese

"How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?"
Charles De Gaulle, in "Les Mots du General", 1962
The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day: What's a Fanatic?

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
Sir Winston Churchill, via The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day, About Wisdom

"Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life."
Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (1724 - 1804)
The Quotations Page

Not-altogether-unrelated posts:

• "A Thought for the Day, About Knowledge"
  (September 28, 2010)
• "Better Ideas From New York City: New Year's Wishes Online"
  (December 30, 2007)

A Thought for the Day, About Nonconformists

"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"
James Thurber, The Quotations Page

A Thought for the Day, From George Burns

"You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there."
George Burns, U.S. actor & comedian (1896 - 1996), The Quotations Page

The Lemming was born during the Truman administration - that's what it says on my birth certificate, and that's the story I'm sticking with - so I can relate to that quote.

Actually, the Lemming has a hard time getting down to the floor. And that's another topic.

The Best Speech You'll Ever Regret

"Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret."
Laurence J. Peter (US educator & writer (1919 - 1988), The Quotations Page

The Lemming thinks he's got a point.

I've hit the "Delete" key fairly often, after creating some inspired rant - and re-reading it a few minutes later.

And then, there's my last post before this one:

• "The Horror! Monster Comics that Scared Congress"
  (October 31, 2010)

John Muir: "Hitched to Everything Else in the Universe"

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
John Muir, "My First Summer in the Sierra" (1911)

("My First Summer in the Sierra" (1911) is available on Google Books.)

The quote's been paraphrased - but the Lemming likes Muir's original words. As I've mentioned before.

A Thought for the Day, About Knowledge

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

A Thought for the Day, About Rivals

"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."
Benjamin Franklin, via The Quotations Page

New Oval Office Rug: No, This isn't Political

"Oval Office rug gets history wrong"
Washington Post (September 4, 2010)

"A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

"President Obama's new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

" 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

"Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

"For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.

"A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian's lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he'd ask in a refrain, 'How long? Not long.' He would finish in a flourish: 'Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.'

"King made no secret of the author of this idea. As a Baptist preacher on the front lines of racial justice, he regarded Parker, a religious leader, as a kindred spirit...."

The Lemming doesn't generally do long excerpts like that - but I didn't want to edit out the article's discussion of (1) who actually made the "moral arc" remark; and (2) that Martin Luther King acknowledged the source.

I don't blame "media" for getting it wrong: most of America's reporters, and many editors, are younger than I am. I've gotten the impression that most of them went to America's government schools. That's another topic. The point is, this is the sort of thing I've gotten used to seeing in America's news media. And that's yet another topic.

Here's the "King" quote, done strictly for laughs, in another blog:

---

"Snug as a flub in a rug?"
Oddly Enough, Reuters blog (September 7, 2010)

"Blog Guy, did you read about the problem with that brand-new rug in the Oval Office, with the great American quotes woven along the edge?

" 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,' is attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. on the rug, but it turns out King was quoting Theodore Parker, a 19th century abolitionist and Unitarian minister...."

The payoff in that post is at the end:

"...Very inspirational. Hey Blog Guy, can you list ALL of the rug’s great American quotes?

"Sure, here they are, a rug-full of Americana:..."

They're funnier, if you're familiar with recent American history - and aren't particularly brittle when it comes to some of our recent presidents.