I am up to my ears in a major project, and you will be asked to participate in the near future to help me launch the thing. Today's ZGram will only fill you in on a brief follow-up by the Toronto Star - in response, I assume, to my August 9 ZGram expressing "Schadenfreude", as we say, that the almighty paper nicknamed the "Red Star" all of a sudden finds itself confronting a serious internet censorship matter.
In an article titled "Censoring Net would sap its vitality" by Carol Goar [Aug. 15, 1998], the Star has made some thoughtful statements I quote selectively here.
The Toronto Star: "One of the beauties of the Internet is that there's room for everyone.
You can create a website, pay an Internet provider to put it on the world wide web and you're a citizen of cyberspace.
The capacity is limitless. There are already 150,000 websites in Canada and the number is growing exponentially."
Ingrid: Yes, and to think that the American-based Zundelsite is Canada's major censorship concern!
The Toronto Star: The uses for a website are equally limitless. You can share information, sell practically anything, organize a grass-roots campaign, circulate your resumé, tell jokes, publish a magazine, offer online sex or act out your fantasies. It is an electronic free-for-all."
Ingrid: Not if your name is Ernst Zundel you can't!
The Toronto Star: The Internet is an overwhelmingly American medium. Only 15 per cent of the websites on your computer are Canadian.
Ingrid: Then why would the Canadian Torquemadas ***presume*** that they can take charge of the Net? Why isn't Canada up in arms? Why isn't America? So 15% want to impose their censorship on 85%? Amazing! Amazing presumption!
The Toronto Star: (The Internet) is also home to some highly distasteful stuff: child pornography, racist propaganda, tips for would-be terrorists.
Ingrid: The Toronto Star has published distasteful stuff for almost a century, especially about things German. Has that gone into the memory hole?
The Toronto Star: These two concerns have led Canada's broadcast watchdog, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to ask whether it should step in. It has scheduled public hearings, this fall, to ask Canadians: ``What should be the commission's role, if any, in regulating and supervising these services under the Broadcasting Act and the Telecommunications Act?
Ingrid: Could it, by any chance, have anything to do with the fact that the Canadian Wiesenthalers seem to think the Internet might be a telephone so they can censor it?
The Toronto Star: The answer from Canada's 800 Internet providers is blunt: The meddlesome federal bureaucracy should keep out. "Power to the people is what the Internet's about. There's no need for external control mechanisms,'' says Ron Kawchuk, president of the Canadian Association of Internet Providers.
Ingrid: Does there exist that rare, courageous ISP among Canada's 800 Internet providers with enough guts to stand next to Ernst Zundel in court for just a day or two? And tell the Politically Correct Enforcers to go where the sun doesn't shine? So far the Internet providers in Canada have talked a brave line, but caved in every time the Holocaust Enforcers picked up the phones to complain! "Voluntary censorship has been their tactic - a genuine oxymoron.
The Toronto Star: There is no harm in having a spirited debate, which is all the CRTC is proposing at this point.
Ingrid: May I participate? I have generously offered my input before - and so have other Revisionists who are constantly under the censorship gun. No takers. These types of "debates" are window dressing, usually paid for by tax payers money or run by B'nai Brith's fronts and fellow travelers.
The Toronto Star: But if the federal agency decides to extend its role into cyberspace, it is going to encounter some enormous obstacles: It has no power over the 85 per cent of Internet material that comes from the U.S. Imposing limits on what Canadians can put online, when American websites are just the click of a button away, makes little sense.
Ingrid: AMEN! But why not take a stand on principle? Now! The next hearing in the Zundelsite matter is November 9, 1998 - as good a date as any. That's when the Berlin Wall caved in!
The Toronto Star: The CRTC isn't responsible for law enforcement. The police are. They work closely with Internet providers to hunt down purveyors of child pornography, hate literature and commercial crime.
Prosecutions are still rare and there aren't enough officers doing this highly specialized kind of work. (...).
Ingrid: Just give it a couple of years. The censors are thicker 'n thieves with law enforcement - because cops just love to control. They control traffic. They control crowds. They control the driving speed by hiding behind bushes to ambush decent citizens. Unfortunately they don't control dope. Crime. And, fortunately, they will not ever quite control our thoughts - even though B'nai Brith hands out those little plaques to reinforce their wish list.
The Toronto Star: The reasons the CRTC regulates broadcasting and telecommunications don't apply to cyberspace. In the case of radio and television, the commission balances competing claims for access to a scarce and valuable public resource: space on the airwaves. In the case of telecommunications, it acts as counterweight to the monopoly power of telephone companies (this is changing as competition comes to the business).
In the case of the Internet, neither rationale is relevant. There is no shortage of space on the Internet. (...)
The Internet is a young, exuberant, highly democratic medium. State censorship, however well-intentioned, would sap its vitality.
Ingrid: It would sap more than just its vitality. It would sap freedom - fair and square. Think if you can afford it. If Ernst goes down, that is a precedent Canadians can ill afford. You heard it on the Zundelsite.
Thought for the Day:
"How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
and pour the waters of the Nile
on every golden scale.
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws.
(Lewish Carrol)