BSIM0003
Information
Policy
Censorship
Class 7
27 March, 2007
Peter Sidorko
peters@hku.hk
Outline
• Introduction, history
• Defining censorship
• Censorship policy
– For
– Against
– Difficulties
• Exercise – censorship policy in primary
schools
Introduction, history
History
• 443 BC – The Office of the Censor is
established in Rome. The censor’s job is to take
the census and regulate citizens’ morals.
• 399 BC - Socrates is accused of corrupting
youth and insulting the gods. Condemned to
death. He insists his intention was only to seek
the truth.
• 213 BC - To deal with political and intellectual
opposition, Shi Huang Ti始皇帝, orders that
certain books be destroyed.
• 1231 – Aristotle’s writings are banned by Pope
Gregory IX.
• 1459 – Gutenberg’s printing press
History
• 1529 – King Henry VIII issues proclamation against
heretical books. He creates a licensing system requiring
prior review of all material to be printed. Failure to obtain
a license can be sentenced to death.
• 1564 – The Index of Forbidden Books is issued by the
Catholic Church. 4000 books on the list which is
renewed and used until mid 20th century.
• 1632 – Galileo publishes findings that the earth is not the
centre of the universe. He is arrested and under threats
of torture he publicly denounces his findings.
• 1791 – US Bill of Rights including 1st amendment
guaranteeing freedom of speech and press.
• 1798 – Alien and Sedition Acts (US). Crime to “write,
print, or speak any false or scandalous criticism of the
government…”
History
• 1884 - Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is banned in a
Massachusetts library: sales skyrocket. The book is
banned many times.
• 1917 – Australian Film Censorship Board and rating
system established.
• 1933 – 20,000 books are burned in Berlin. The first of
many such burnings.
• 1943 – theatres and publishers closed down in Nazi
Germany
• 1948 – U.N. Declaration of Human Rights declaring all
people have the right to freedom of expression.
• 1968 – calls for censorship of TV after Petula Clark (a
white woman) touches black musician Harry Belafonte’s
arm during a duet.
• 1977 – a neo-Nazi group are given permission to march
in Skokie, Illinois.
• etc, etc, etc
Some banned books
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The Bible
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin
Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
Ulysses, James Joyce
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
Capital, Karl Marx
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D. H. Lawrence
Defining censorship
Definition
• What constitutes censorship in your views?
• What words describe censorship for you?
• What do you believe is the purpose of
censorship?
• Discuss in small groups.
Censorship
• Prohibition of the production, distribution,
circulation, or display of a work by a
governing authority on grounds that it
contains objectionable or dangerous
material. The person who decides what is
to be prohibited is called a censor.
http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_c.cfm
• Censorship has generally been viewed as
“an effort by [a] government, private
organization, group, or individual to
prevent people from reading, seeing or
hearing what may be considered as
dangerous to government or harmful to
public morality.” Martha Boaz
• The ALA sees censorship as an overt
“attempt to remove books and other items
from a school, denying all other children
access to the work.” Mary Hull
• See for example Libraries ban children's book because
of inappropriate word (The Daily Vidette, 26 March,
2007)
• "Censorship is when you actually remove the book, if
you don't order a book, they would argue it's book
selection. That's the thing about censorship, if you don't
want to read the book, don't read the book, but allow it to
be in the library for those people who wish to read
it.“ (Julie Derden, teaching materials librarian at Milner
Library)
– http://media.www.dailyvidette.com/media/storage/paper420/new
s/2007/03/26/News/Libraries.Ban.Childrens.Book.Because.Of.In
appropriate.Word-2791015.shtml
Censorship policy
Australian Library and Information
Association
• The ALIA Statement on Professional Ethics
explicitly states that librarians and library
technicians should not exercise censorship in
the selection; use or access to material by
rejecting on moral, political, gender, sexual
preference, racial or religious grounds alone
material which is otherwise relevant to the
purpose of the library and meets the standards
which are appropriate to the library concerned.
Material must not be rejected on the grounds
that its content is controversial or likely to offend
some sections of the library's community.
American Library Association
• We uphold the principles of intellectual
freedom and resist all efforts to censor
library resources.
– Code of Ethics
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/code
ofethics/codeethics.htm
International FLA
• Libraries shall acquire, organize and
disseminate information freely and oppose
any form of censorship.
– IFLA Statement on Libraries and Intellectual
Freedom
http://www.ifla.org/faife/policy/iflastat/iflastat.ht
m
Areas of censorship
• Political – to rewrite history, to suppress antigovt views etc
• Religious – protect values, to suppress other
religions
• Sexual – obscenity, indecency, pornography and
paedophilia
• Social/moral – bad language, sexism, sexual
harrassment, suppression of ethnicities, hate
speech and racial vilification
• What are the problems we face in attempting to
define and implement censorship policy based
on these areas?
eg, Political
• ''We are witnessing a historic transformation of
the traditional modes of power. Power today is
becoming less based on physical and material
parameters (territory, military forces) and more
on factors linked to the capability of storing,
managing, distributing, and creating
information.'‘
• ''recognition is spreading in governments around
the world that the new technologies may
profoundly alter the nature of political power,
sovereignty, and governance.''
• From Scott Crawford & Kekula Bray-Crawford SelfDetermination in the Information Age paper delivered at the
Internet Society 1995 International Networking Conference in
Honolulu on June 29, 1995 http://www.hawaiination.org/sdinfoage.html
The case for censorship policy
• Protect society, especially the vulnerable
eg children, ethnic minorities
• Pornography
• Hate speech
• Dangerous topics (Drugs, weapons, etc.)
• Rewriting history
• Official Secrets
Public interest and censorship
policy
• What interests (such as security and intelligence) must
be kept secret to safeguard national interests?
• What information (government, in particular), if any,
should be kept “secret”?
• Are there areas of government activity where complete
secrecy is essential?
• How would you define ``the public interest'' where
information is concerned?
• Is fear of government accountability merely an emotive
conspiracy theory?
– From Stuart Hannabuss and Mary Allard, Library Review Volume
50 . Number 2 . 2001 . pp. 81-89
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?Filename=ht
ml/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/0350500203.pdf
The case against censorship policy
• Will censorship be misused and abused by
politicians?
• How can we judge what is to be censored?
Whose morals are the benchmark?
• Why should what we see and hear be
determined by some faceless bureaucrat?
• Let people judge for themselves what they
consider to be obscene or immoral.
• Will censorship lead to a slippery slope of rights
denial?
• Does censorship deny basic rights?
• Does censorship inhibit knowledge?
• Does censorship erode democracy?
Difficulties in developing censorship
policy
• What can and should a fair society tolerate
and why?
• What do we regard as decent and
offensive?
• Do people use terms like ``decent'' and
``offensive'' in similar ways?
• Does Internet filtering work? At what cost?
• Changing community standards
• Varied community standards across
cultures.
Internet censorship
• Differing views of acceptable content –
national and regional
• Many countries routinely censor Internet
sites, see Internet Censorship Explorer
http://ice.citizenlab.org/
– eg Australia:
• In March 2006, a spoof site of Australian Prime
Minister John Howard was shut down due to
pressure from the government. The domain
registrar suspended the site after a complaint from
the Prime Minister's office.
EU and Internet policy
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creating a safe environment (by encouraging
self-regulation of the industry);
developing filtering and rating systems
(particularly as regards their usability in
Europe);
encouraging awareness actions (to promote
safe Internet use to families, schools, etc.);
support measures (including monitoring and
assessing the developing legal situation).
– Freedom of expression and the communication
networks http://www.coe.int/t/e/cultural_cooperation/culture/completed_projects/nit/sturges98_
18.asp#P281_120644
Filtering
• Blocking access to certain categories of
material
• Includes blocking materials that are not
questionable (over-filtering)
– eg blocking sites when searching “breasts”
also blocks important information about breast
cancer
Non-conformance penalties
• The US Children’s Internet Protecting Act
(CIPA) requires schools and libraries
receiving federal funds for Internet access
to install filtering software to block access
to materials that are obscene, child
pornography, or harmful to minors
(Electronic Privacy Information Center,
2003). So if a library does not install the
software it could well mean a cut in federal
funding.
Local vs large scale filtering:
The Great Firewall Of China
• In addition to the backbone filtering deployed in China,
Internet filtering is now occurring at multiple levels of
access and filtering is increasingly being built-in to
applications and web services themselves. Domestic
Chinese search engines, such as Baidu and Yisou,
implement their own filtering to exclude search results
from websites that provide information the government
considers “sensitive”. Domestic blog providers
technically prohibit the posting of blog entries that
contain “sensitive” key words and popular Chinese web
portals have been known to remove posts from their web
forums that contain “sensitive” information. This “selfregulation” is a key component of China’s overall filtering
regime. Nart Villeneuve, http://ice.citizenlab.org/?p=180
Google and China
• “While removing search results is
inconsistent with Google's mission,
providing no information... is more
inconsistent with our mission”
– Google statement
Exercise: Implementing a
censorship policy in primary
schools
Policy implementation
• An organisation/dept/individual needs to
be identified as responsible for
implementing the policy
• Resources need to be allocated to
implementation
• The policy needs to be communicated to
those affected by it
• Mechanisms to reward/penalise
conformance/non-conformance to the
policy need to be established
Policy implementation
To measure conformance to the policy :
• Policy goals should be clearly stated
• The goals must be measurable
• Implementation is directed to achieving the
goals
• Data to verify conformance must be
collected
Possible issues to consider
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Filtering
Self-regulation
Awareness raising
Rating system
Monitoring policy
Penalties
Responding to criticisms, eg inappropriate
literature
Exercise (part 1)
• You are asked to write a brief censorship
policy for a primary school.
• The policy should cover:
– Internet access
– Educational/teaching materials eg texts, etc
• See if you can find examples from web
pages to assist you or draft them yourself.
Exercise (part 2)
• Using the policy implementation steps,
design an implementation proposal for
your new policy.
• You should assume that the school has no
such existing policy in place.
• Use the word document provided and
submit your findings to the forum.
Sample policy statements:
Internet access
• All users of the computers and the Internet will abide by all federal
and provincial laws regarding copyright, threatening or obscene
material, racism and sexism or all other immoral, unethical or illegal
activities.
• If a user encounters any inappropriate, obscene, abusive, offensive,
harassing, illegal, to illegal activities, the user will immediately report
it to their teacher or supervisor.
• At any time during the use of the computer and/or the Internet, the
user must be willing to explain to a supervisor or teacher their
activities and for what purpose they are accessing certain files.
• The Board reserves the right to review, edit, or remove any material
stored on any computer or network in use by the Board.
• All students wishing to use the Internet must have an authority form
signed by a parent or guardian, authorising such access.
• Users agree to the immediate loss of computer and/or Internet
privileges should they fail to abide by this Policy.
• Users may not use the Internet or any technology for any illegal or
immoral purpose
Sample policy statements:
Educational/teaching materials
• The Board of School Trustees supports
the provision of a wide range of learning
resources at varying levels of difficulty and
with diversity of appeal to meet the needs
of students and teachers.
• Any resident or employee of the School
District may formally challenge learning
resources used in the district's educational
program on the basis of appropriateness.
Guiding Principles
1. Any resident or employee of the school district may raise objection to
learning resources used in a school's educational program despite the fact
that the individuals selecting such resources were duly qualified to make the
selection, followed the proper procedure, and observed the criteria for
selecting learning resources.
2. The Administrative Officer should review the selection and objection rules
with the teaching staff at least annually. The staff should be reminded that
the right to object to learning resources is one granted by policies enacted
by the Board of School Trustees.
3. No parent has the right to determine reading, viewing or listening matter for
students other than her/his own children.
4. Although it is the learning resources which are challenged, the principles of
the freedom to read/listen/view must be defended as well.
5. Access to challenged material shall not be restricted during the
reconsideration process.
6. The major criterion for the final decision is the appropriateness of the
material for its intended educational use.
7. A decision to sustain a challenge shall not necessarily be interpreted as a
judgment of irresponsibility on the part of the professionals involved in the
original selection and/or use of the material.
These may be useful
• http://www.ualberta.ca/~aschrade/internet/
school.htm
• http://www.tcdsb.org/policyregister/A29.ht
ml
• http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/statementspols/st
atementspolicies.htm
• http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/poli
cy.cfm
• http://www.ncac.org/education/schools/#po
licies
References
• Boaz, M, Censorship, in Encyclopedia of Library and
Information Science, edited by Allen Kent and Harold Lancour
(New York: Marcel Dekker, 1970), Vol. 4, pp. 328-38.
• Byrne, A., (2003), The End of History: Censorship and
libraries, Australian Library Journal, Vol. 53, No. 2,
http://alia.org.au/publishing/alj/53.2/full.text/byrne.html
• Hannabuss, S. & Allard, M. Library Review, Vol. 50, No 2,
2001, pp. 81-89
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?Filename
=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/03505002
03.pdf
• Hull, M, Censorship in America: A Reference Handbook,
Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1999.
• Riley, G.B., Censorship, New York : Facts on File, c1998
http://library.hku.hk:80/record=b2038087
• Villeneuve, Nart (2006), Human Rights and the Internet,
http://ice.citizenlab.org/?p=180