Censoring the internet is unpalatable
It seems the Canadian government is about to hand us a Raines Sandwich online. The label will say purity, light and joy. But it will be harmful if swallowed.
Specifically, Tuesday’s National Post front page says the Commons Heritage Committee “has cleared the way for the federal government to regulate video content on internet social media, such as Youtube, the same way it regulates national broadcasting, under a new amendment made to a bill updating the Broadcasting Act.” But “cleared the way” embodies an assumption as unrealistic as it is alarming.
The alarming part is that censorship is desirable in principle. And the unrealistic part is that the government can do it. Which brings me to the Raines Sandwich.
You see, in a Puritan attack on sleazy bars and the lowlifes they supposedly contained, New York State’s 1896 “Raines Law” sharply restricted saloons’ hours and hiked liquor license fees. But hotels with 10 or more rooms could still serve drinks with meals at any time, resulting in the immediate creation of the inedible, reusable “Raines Sandwich,” sometimes merely rancid and sometimes literally rubber. It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences, I emphasize, not Unpredictable ones.
Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies rightly said “Granting a government agency authority over legal user generated content — particularly when backed up by the government’s musings about taking down websites — doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.” But there seems little point in repeating the arguments against censorship to Thomas Sowell’s “anointed.” Sufficiently convinced of their own virtue as well as our vice, our political and bureaucratic masters believe they can be trusted with what may be said and thought, and what may not.
Tuesday’s Post also noted that Vladimir Putin just “ordered jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s network of regional offices to suspend activities on Monday as a court behind closed doors began to consider outlawing them and his Anti-corruption Foundation. Moscow’s state prosecutors want the court to ban the network as extremist.”
Yeah. I’ll bet. And while Trudeau & Co. are not Putin, acting like him would worry lesser mortals. As Menzies added, “It’s difficult to contemplate the levels of moral hubris, incompetence or both that would lead people to believe such an infringement of rights is justifiable.” But since they are immune to such reproaches, consider the hubris and incompetence that would lead them to think it’s possible.
As the story noted, “The bill doesn’t include details of what that regulation will look like.” Apparently practical details are for losers. But roughly an hour’s worth of video is uploaded to Youtube every second, and it may prove difficult to watch it all, render wise judgment, and hit the moving target.
On the other hand, it’s very predictable that self-appointed guardians of public morality will report their fellows to an Office of Online Censorship that will, like Human Rights Tribunals, pound targets they happen to dislike with self-righteous arbitrariness. Especially small ones. So as usual, censorship won’t prevent vice or promote liberty, equality and fraternity, it will just target enemies of the state.
Now it is true that there’s a growing volume of appalling rubbish online. And not just because the crooked timber of humanity is incorporated into its structure. For cultural, technological and legal reasons, the quantity of casually mindless abuse and obscenity on social media is rising and something should be done. But pace Lily Tomlin’s gag about wanting to be somebody, having Bad King John,
WON’T PREVENT VICE OR PROMOTE LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND FRATERNITY, IT WILL JUST TARGET ENEMIES OF THE STATE.
the Caliph or Ivan the Terrible show up and grasp your tongue with heated tongs is not the answer.
There are several non-tyrannical alternatives. For instance removing social media giants’ legal immunity from libel actions, since they clearly are publishers who remove material they dislike as well as stuff that’s actually illegal. But the anointed don’t like the thought of a messily decentralized pattern of litigation and private decisions to clean up this mess … or any other.
They certainly don’t like the even more radical idea of people minding their manners, refusing to tweet or retweet obscenities, basing critical comments on facts and logic rather than vacuous character assassination etc. And here we may have made ourselves this Raines Sandwich.
Just as your country will have an army in it, yours or someone else’s, so your life will have some control in it, yours or someone else’s. In extremis this rule lands you in jail or an asylum. And online the gushing libertine sewer is creating support for someone to do something. But censorship by people too arrogant to recognize their own moral or practical limitations isn’t the answer.
It’s a Raines Sandwich, as nasty and unintended as it is predictable. And at least back in 1896 people knew not to eat those things.