[pp.int.general] Against Internet censorship

[Partidul Piratilor]

Dear Marco,

Our parliamentaries got on the wrong foot when started to talk. One
especialy said that the coments on blogs and forums are "disturbing and
offensive towards her" and must be moderated, therefore proposed a law to
institute a filtering sistem and a authority to watch this.
Since there were many voices arguing that this is censorship and Romania
went thru this for 50 years, now they have changed the aproach.
They now argue that children are exposed to foul language used in political
coments on blogs and other media sites and propose a Code of commons sense
rules on the Internet, to be implemented voluntary by website admins, which
also contains a proposal for a filtering sistem. Still the proposal
contradicts itself about the voluntary part, since it also states that all
admins are obliged to follow it :) .Until now they did not brought into
discusion the pornography.
Unfortunately, to cover their own incompetence unions of teacher are
suporting the proposal, saying that education must be done and this is a way
to do it. This, because in Romania people see Internet as a education tool
and playground for young people.
Also the majoritary curch says that Internet is a tool for damnation and the
language on it must be purged and education be done even through coercition.

This is the state of play until now.

We have wrote a open letter arguing about: 1. education is made before
accesing the internet and is not webmasters job to do it. 2. filtering
content does not educate people, only muffles the indezirables. 3. filtering
is the tool of represive regimes (mentioning China and Iran) 4. Freedom of
speech is guaranteed by our Consitution, EU treaties and UN Human rights.

What we want is a full burial of the filtering idea to prevent the future
initiatives, making the most of the fact that the main arguments are now
personal attacks and education through Internet.

Best,
Cristian
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