I am against all forms of censorship. Period. Not in this day and age in our modern society anyway. I mean, sure, there could be some causes for concern due to the multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic background of our fragile country, or there are concerns that our children might end up as sex maniacs due to unwholesome exposure to pornography, but shouldn’t we start to think up other means to curb these social issues rather than outright denial of the freedom of rights? Or are we saying our children can jerk off all they want, as long as it’s all hidden well and nobody sees them doing it?
Remember that it could only be decades or even years ago when lingerie was seen as taboo, or the word fuck wasn’t supposed to be even whispered? These days, women flaunt their barely covered bodies (yes, what hot bodies!) on the catwalks, in the malls, on the streets, on TV without as much as batting an eyelash. Some may cause a little bit of stir for a brief moment (as Janet Jackson recently found out), but they are soon dismissed simply as wardrobe malfunctions or such. The word fuck has evolved so much and used so commonly, that anyone who watches the new Battlestar Galactica can easily recognise it amidst the thinly veiled replacement of the newly invented word “frak”.
I remember sometime back when our World of Warcraft guild fell apart and some of the guys from the US were almost screaming bloody murder, when they thought that their forum postings, comments or articles had been censored. Granted there actually was a bit of censorship going on, but trust me, these guys do take their freedom of speech very seriously. Recall that little episode not too long ago that local blogger Mr. Brown had with the MDA. Due to certain opinions within the government, and one would believe certain encouragement in direction, he had his column taken off the newspaper. No choice. Swallow your pride and life will be filled with peace and quiet. In Hokkien, it’s called Lan Lan. And that’s the difference between citizens of nations that enforce censorship, and those that stand by their individual rights. One suffers in silence, kept safe only if they play by the defined rules, the other exudes confidence because they know their rights, fearless in the face of obstacles.
There is very little upside to censorship but some governments still do it. Gerrie Lim commented in his book, “In Lust We Trust”, that he shared a joke with Annabel Chong saying that they must be the only two Singaporeans who are involved in the Sex Industry. Perhaps that is a fact when he is talking about the porn industry in the States, but in truth, I suspect, without any evidence of course, that there are more people involved one way or another. Fact is, did Gerrie Lim and Annabel Chong turn out to be criminals or any worse than others? Not by a long shot. Sure, they may have a couple of lessons-learnt or some stories to pass down the next generation, but at least they have experienced it by their own choices. There is no value in a having a person grow up in a “pure”, “safe” and “fabricated” world. The real intrinsic value comes in having a person growing up knowing the difference between good and bad, making the right choices for themselves. Living and experiencing the process. Given the blue and red pill, which will you take?
Today, one of my clients dropped me an email saying that she was unable to access her webmail from her office. She had tried from home the previous night and it was fine. It is probably due to her office’s firewall which closed off certain ports required by the server’s mail system. From an IT security standpoint, I suppose this blocking of specific ports is still justifiable. However, it prompted me to look into ways to bypass or overcome this problem.
After a quick search, I found this article by Freerk (ok, ignore the strange nick) to be extremely helpful. It explains his personal opinions (a little) against censorship, and why he wrote that article saying, “no government or even a system administrator got the right to choose which information an individual has access to”. Amen to that. I remember when the Internet was still in its infancy and I was still using one of those text-based “browser” to access web pages, the Singapore government had already started imposing their strict censorship rules. No access to the luscious women of Playboy or Hustler via the Internet, but all the Bulletin Boards (BBS) at that time had porn of some forms, because those were hard to manage or control. People went underground and still managed to get their hands on “lewt” one way or another. Where there’s demand, there will be supply.
But I digress. Back to Freerk’s article. I checked out some of the sites and tools he posted and found some (not all) of them to be working. It’s a bit slower than “normal” connection, but they work and manage to bypass the filters enforced by the ISPs. Of the few I tested, you can try out http://www.dejavu.org/, Kangzhuang .ucam.org and a tool that requires a client installation HTTP-Tunnel. So if you ever need to work around that pesky office firewall, all may not be lost. Enjoy the Internet as it’s meant to be.
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