British Library Network Blocks 'Hamlet' For 'Violent Content'
from the infinite-jest dept
The use of Web blocks -- usually "for the children" -- is becoming depressingly common these days. So much so, that many people have probably come to accept them as a fact of online life. After all, the logic presumably goes, we can't do much about it, and anyway surely it's a good thing to try to filter out the bad stuff? Techdirt readers, of course, know otherwise, but for anyone who still thinks that well-intentioned blocking of "unsuitable" material is unproblematic, the following cautionary tale from the British blogger W.H. Forsyth may prove instructive:
On Monday, I was sitting in the British Library frantically trying to write my new book in a shturmovshchina. I had to quickly check a particular line in Hamlet, so I Googled Hamlet MIT, because the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has put the entire works of Shakespeare up on the Internet. (It takes 70 mins to order a physical book). I clicked on the link and...
The rest of the highly-entertaining blog post details attempts to get the library staff to see that there was a worrying symbolism about blocking Hamlet of all things in the British Library of all places:
A message came up from the British Library telling me that access to site was blocked due to "violent content".The IT department said there was nothing to be done, as it was only the British Library's wifi service that was blocking Hamlet, and the British Library's wifi service, they seemed sure, had nothing to do with the British Library. They were merely ships that passed in the night. Children crying to each other from either bank of an uncrossable river.
As this shows, the British Library's IT department tried to shrug this off with a "not our fault" comment to the effect that it was the wifi service doing the blocking, not the British Library, but that is just casuistry: the wifi service was being offered by the British Library to allow its users to access the Internet -- an indispensable research tool these days. As one of the world's leading repositories of knowledge, the British Library has a clear responsibility to facilitate that access. The fact that its staff seemed unperturbed by the censorship of Shakespeare in this supposed temple of British culture is also deeply troubling.
A tweet bemoaning the block had more luck: within 12 minutes, the British Library Reference Services tweeted back:
Not any more! We've made adjustments to the filtering software :)
Since the block was quickly removed, you might ask: what's the problem? Well, maybe stuff like this, reported by @matt_sperling on Twitter, the same day as the Hamlet censorship:
various images found thru google image search were blocked
These included a painting of Lot and his Daughters by Hendrick Goltzius:
and Luca Giordano's Battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs:
The next day, @alexvtunzelmann
tweeted about continuing issues:
New @britishlibrary wifi is cranky & erratic. Has just blocked me from reading Tennyson on Project Gutenberg. Possibly on grounds of taste.
And that's the problem: taste is highly subjective, and clearly leading here to massive overblocking on the British Library's wifi network. The fact that the blocks were later removed misses the point: that they are inappropriate obstacles for scholars carrying out legitimate searches, and that they should never have been applied in the first place. It's sad to see a great institution like the British Library complicit in this spread of routine and mindless censorship.
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Filed Under: british library, censorship, filters, hamlet, violence
Reader Comments
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What about blocking anything religion related? After all it may be offensive to atheists no? Why not block everything Allah doesn't approve? After all it might be offensive to Muslims, no?
As for me just block Justin Bieber, it's offensive to me ;/
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Holy cow! Anomaly discovered and FIXED in 12 minutes!
Here's a rule: unless intended and persistent and totally unfixed, ignore anomalies.
Masnicking: daily spurts of short and trivial traffic-generating items.
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1) Find an online webpage translator
2) Translate the blocked webpage from any language to English, even though you know the webpage is already in English.
And presto, you get around the web blocking. I used to do this all the time in high school, including when I was doing research reports and had to get to blocked .edu websites. (yeah, you'd think a .edu website should never be blocked in a school)
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The bigger point
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Re: Holy cow! Anomaly discovered and FIXED in 12 minutes!
Then again, that's the world you want to live in. A world of having to ask permission for everything and keeping quiet if you're denied.
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Sad times
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Re: Holy cow! Anomaly discovered and FIXED in 12 minutes!
By that logic, you shouldn't exist.
and why should we ignore anomalies?
once is an anomaly, twice is a pattern, three times is a trend.
WHich means, for your addled brain, if we ignore "anomalies", they become something bigger.
Remember this quote, memorize it well...
"First they came for speech I did not like, and I said nothing. Then they came for speech that did not affect me, again, I said nothing. When they came for speech that affected me, no one was around to say anything."
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Re: The bigger point
It's one thing to say 'This is Shakespeare, an amazing playwright with a number of plays to his name including...' and have students read, examine and act out his various plays, but if the plays themselves are prohibited from being accessed and read due to being 'obscene' or 'violent', then they might as well not have existed at all, and Shakespeare's name, cultural impact, and the plays will simply fade away as no longer relevant.
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A better way to get around online blocking is to police the enforcers by making sure they are aware, and follow up on, the notices of incorrect blocking.
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My little sister was amazing me with her un-blocking skills when she was in year 7 (I am 10 years older).
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Re: The bigger point
it would only be the already hugely famous works/authors who would be noticed (IF THEY ARE) when they go awol; 'minor' or unknown authors/works might not be noticed by anyone...
geez, just one in a series of a million reasons why such 'filtering' (read: CENSORSHIP) will be HARMFUL to society...
the thing is, i truly believe The They (tm) WANT to 'harm' us, in that keeping us as stupid, clueless, and ignorant as possible suits THEIR agenda...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Devil's Advocate
I'd be happy if the British Library abandoned net filtering entirely, but that's not going to happen. I'd be happy in a different way if someone figured out how to automate a "literary value" test, but that's even less likely to happen. Given what they have to work with, isn't a value-agnostic filter a better solution than only allowing access to a pre-defined list of materials?
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I can't fathom why they'd block that image. After all it's based on a story from the Holy Bible, isn't it?
Genesis 19:30-38
Maybe it is because of the unnamed daughter's bare chest?
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Filter...
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Re: Devil's Advocate
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Re: Filter...
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Re: Sad times
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Re: Re: Holy cow! Anomaly discovered and FIXED in 12 minutes!
As a percentage, very few posts on the average article are reported and hidden. By his logic, his comments and those of the AC who whines about it are simply anomalies and the reporting should be ignored.
I wonder if he and his ilk will take his own advice? Doubtful.
Anyway, to expand your quote, such obvious "anomalies" should be heeded and taken note of very closely. If something so obviously acceptable - and even necessary for childrens' education in many areas (Shakespeare is part of the national curriculum) - is being blocked, then who knows what other, less obviously acceptable or necessary content is being blocked? Not to mention the wider point that the right wing tosser currently in charge wants to enforce this kind of unworkable censorship on the entire country.
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Re: Sad times
A public library in Capelle aan de IJssel (part of the dutch biblebelt) in the Netherlands was basically blackmailed, the city council said: "either you filter the internet, or we stop funding your little library".
When they refused a member of the council who was also tv-editor of a dutch alarmist watchdog show basically ran to his desk and penned a scathing show that basically said:
LIBRARIES ARE DENS OF DEPRAVITY, THEY ALLOW YOUR KIDS TO WATCH PORN! (those were fun weeks, we basically got called a bunch of porn peddling criminals).
Eventually it was settled in court, but council never gave up as they did finally get a few computers to filter the internet.
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Re: Re: Re: Holy cow! Anomaly discovered and FIXED in 12 minutes!
IT'S OVER 9000!
Ahem.
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it is a companion aphorism to the other major point about speech i like to make: CONTEXT is everything...
surely, nothing could be more 'nice' than saying someone is 'pretty' and you'd like to 'kiss' them...
unless you are in a biker bar and it is one hetero dude taunting another hetero dude...
surely, nothing could be more 'obscene' than a string of disgusting expletives about yo' mama in the face of another...
unless it is your buds and you've been drinking and someone just made a lucky shot...
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING
there are no 'bad' words, just small minds...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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"mindless censorship"
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If you think this is bad......
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