Netflix (Internet Censorship)

[pete smout]

On 31/05/13 08:47, Graham Todd wrote:
>> Netflix Desktop works well in linux-  uses Wine to run FF.  I use it in
>> Ubuntu 12.04
>>
>>
>> garyk
>
> Thanks for that clarification, Gary.  I think that I ought to clarify
> my remarks, too: I live in the South East of England and get my
> internet connection by cable.  All this may add to the reason why my,
> and Gary's, remarks are different, I believe.
>
> I stand by the general comments I made about Linux and the connection
> to services by Netflix.  In the country, we are facing calls for
> restricted internet access and also for internet providers to police
> the information some subscribers can access, in the wake of Mark
> Bridger's conviction for the murder of April Jones (for those not in the
> UK, his computer was found to have  sex abuse images on the hard drive,
> and thus the need to restrict what subscribers can contact by filtering
> by
>   internet service providers).
>
> Of course, all right minded people's thoughts will be with April's
> parents, friends, and wider family, but I don't want my access to
> information to be dictated by the whim of my internet service provider,
> however well-meaning it may be.  These thoughts are more in line with
> the philosophy that the Founding Fathers of the United States showed
> when setting up their Constitution.
>
> Now, whilst we in the UK have a constitution, it is not a written
> Constitution, and evolves over time.  This makes it easier for those
> bodies who want to restrict access to the internet to have a platform
> for their views that can't be restricted by reference to the
> constitution. However, the same arguments over Netflix apply to access
> generally. Using Wine to access Netflix sounds to me like 'dabbling in
> the dark arts' of Micro$oft; if Netflix wanted Linux to gain access
> to its service, it would provide a Linux-friendly version (it might not
> be friendly for all distributions, but it would be Linux-friendly).
> It's as simple as that.
>
> ++Graham Todd
>
Hi,

Whilst my heart goes out to April's family and friends, after this 
terrible crime, we as a country (UK) must avoid knee jerk reactions to 
this and other incidents.

Let us all who are older than the internet (showing my age now!), think 
back to time before the net, when such crimes *still* happened and were 
perhaps not so widely reported, but did still exist.

The net is a reflection of society and as such a mirror of the world 
warts 'n' all.

Whilst I would support a '.xxx' domain, and possibly having to opt in to 
viewing them at the time of signing up with your ISP, asking a 'service 
provider' to police the laws of the land is not the way forward that is 
what the police / security services are paid for! Weather or not they 
need new powers to do this I am not expert enough to say, but you 
*cannot* have private companies policing the net, when will it end, will 
political activists websites become barred because they disagree with 
the government / company, Censorship is *never* the answer education is 
the answer, and for the tiny minority that slip through there are laws 
in place to deal with these sick individuals.

I hope and wish that our government is sensible enough to avoid knee 
jerk reactions, but then again I just used sensible and government in 
the same sentence! What am I thinking ;)

Pete