A Cage That Needs Rattling

[fiat_knox]

Livejournal's been blocked from Wrexham public library, because "kids might read inappropriate content".

The library has a book, Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. Shall we close down the whole library? Or just burn all the fucking books, in case some of them contain inappropriate material?

The streets are not safe. Criminals use streets, and cars, and bikes and rollerskates, to make their way to and from their crimes. Shall we close down streets, in case a kid happens to wander along a road where a burglar or a predator might wander along, say, while out shopping or going down to the pub?

All crime is committed by the living. Why not fucking make life a criminal offence punishable by death?

The blocking of innocuous sites in Wrexham public library is an egregious abuse of authority. This is a cage I intend to try and rattle as long and loud as possible.

There's an election just down the road. I'll start there.

Comments

[lemuria.livejournal.com]

And the vast majority of child abuse cases occur within the family: so why not just ban people from having kids?
This would also solve the problem of those dreadful unhealthy birthday cakes in school classrooms - no schools and no birthdays!
What pisses me off is this sort of stuff masquerading as concern for children when it's really about 'what if Mrs Bloggs goes to the local paper and complains that little Johnny saw a naughty web site in the library? Better cover our backsides quick.'

[cdave]

Have they blocked LJ specifically, or have they just bought some new piece of software that's doing it indiscriminately to lots of sites?

Besides, there are ways round these things.

--
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. - John Gilmore

Targetted

[fiat-knox.livejournal.com]

LJ is the target, all right. I tried the LJ home page and it was blocked, so yeah. They've decided to do a blitz on blogging in public.

Which is the internet version of making ball gags mandatory for the general public in the street.