In observance, I guess you could say, of ALA's Banned Books Week, NPR did a segment on how The Grapes of Wrath was banned at the end of the 30's.
It was good but I really wish they had focused on more recent titles. Going over the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2007 might have been more relevant. At least it would have helped people understand what librarians and advocates of free speech are dealing with in this day and age.
UPDATE: WBEZ did something slightly more along the lines of what I was thinking with yesterday's segment, 'Celebrating Some of the Best Banned Books'.
Lest we forget, from the blog, Technology Liberation Front:
Despite the appeal of combating defamation by banning online anonymity, lawmakers should be wary about restricting anonymous speech in the name of fighting libel. The same laws designed to deter defamation can also be used to target political dissent or silence whistleblowers for whom the option of remaining anonymous is critical. While Mark Klein and Babak Pasdar elected to reveal their identities, they remind us that whistleblowers are crucial safeguards against government excesses. And as Chinese dissidents know all too well, governments around the world have a long history of suppressing political opinions that undermine state legitimacy.
Today is the first day of Banned Books Week. There are hundreds if not thousands of events happening throughout the nation.
In Chicago we had a Read-Out which mentioned, at least in the report by NPR, the usual suspects ("Catcher in the Rye", "Of Mice and Men" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn").
Censorship (particularly of the state-sponsored variety) is unquestionably one of the clearest attributes of a society out of control. I recognize that. And I'm proud as hell that librarians have taken a leading role in opposing it.
Yet I feel the focus on books is somehow inadequate to the challenge that we're facing.
We have the example of Burma before our very eyes. One of the first moves that the military took in its effort to quell democratic protest, was to pull the Internet.
We've had examples of Google censoring its search results and Yahoo handing over confidential information under extremely questionable circumstances. Even in our own country which is second to none in tolerance and free speech, web pages and other forms of online content have been censored either unintentionally or not.
My point is not to ignore the Books. Rather, it's to argue for including the ever expanding suppression in electronic form as well.
I've said elsewhere that issues of bandwidth and access will increasingly define what we mean by censorship. In order to combat censorship, we need to go where the Censors are. And increasingly, that's online.
ALA just sent out an email about "Banned Books Week" which this year will be running 9/29-10/6.
This got me thinking of access to the Internet and other bandwidth issues, and how the absence of access/bandwidth might relate to more "traditional" forms of censorship.
With books, you can simply do away with them or alter them to fit your world view. That's censorship old-style.
In a networked world, it's all about access and bandwidth. This opens up a whole new set of vulnerabilities.
If a site is blocked, it becomes like the proverbial tree in a forest. You don't have to chop it down -- just keep people from seeing it.
This problem only increases as we begin to depend on the network for all our information, entertainment and communication needs.
Eventually if the pipes aren't working, it's we who'll become like the trees in the forest, isolated and cut off from the outside world.
For this reason, we need to be increasingly vigilant over the quality of that connection and treat any threat to it whether governmental or corporate as a censorship issue of the highest priority.
While googling for pictures of failed technologies for my post on eBooks, I came across a strange note at the bottom of Google's search results. It read:
"In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org."
I wondered what this was about so I followed the 'DMCA complaint' link. It led to a 'cease-and-desist letter' posted on ChillingEffects.org telling Google to remove search results from its database not because Google is infringing on copyright but because the site is that Google is linking to!
(more after the jump...)
