Censorware

The Impossible Project

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This piece came about through a discussion on the FIRE religious-freedom mailing list, back when the whole censorware debate was just getting started. While I am an avid supporter of free speech, often engaged in activism to protect it, I felt a need to point out certain encouraging vulnerabilities in the opposition. Here are excerpts from messages that launched the thread:

"Once installed, X-STOP is automatically loaded every time the computer is turned on. X-STOP monitors activity on the computer to guard against pornographic and offensive material. When a prohibited event occurs, X-STOP covers the computer screen and requires a password to continue."

"NIGHTMARES!!! Meaning that if we step in it, computers with this program would forbid us to describe what we've stepped in? SHIT!"

And here is my response, revised for publication on this Website:

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Well ... they'd like to TRY. Allow me to add some interesting linguistic, historical, and sociological elements to this debate.

I sincerely doubt that any of the censors will think of blocking non-English expletives, as the sort of person who thinks up this nonsense tends to be quite ethnocentric. They probably won't even think of relatively well-known things like merde [French: shit] and cojones [Spanish: testicles, colloquially "balls"]. They certainly won't think to block expletives, insults, and other useful expressions lifted from invented languages, such as veQDuj 'oH Dujllj'e' [Klingon: Your ship is a garbage scow.] or ranem [Laadan: a "nonpearl" -- an ugly thing to which one builds layer by layer as an oyster does a pearl, such as a festering hatred to which one pays attention].
They have no chance of keeping up with the speed of thought. Language can evolve in the blink of an eye, the touch of a key. In short, those of us who feel vexed by this attempted intrusion on our right of free expression can simply invent new invective. The censors will then have to read lots and lots of offensive material in order to find all the new invective and ban it. The end result will be a language even further enriched with ways to cuss out, insult, and otherwise express annoyance at people: "Fnorb you!" "Get the quillb out of my face!" "Well, you can just kiss my zwomp!" "This report is full of spuz!" All of these make perfect sense, thanks to human linguistic hardwiring, and all of them will glide right through the filters. For an example of this already in effect, study the evolution of street slang used to discuss contraband drugs -- it is always evolving to keep drug runners in the know and cops out.
The words "censor," "delete," and their various forms are rather popular in science fiction, used as expletives, to show the passage of time and the evolution of language and society. Since censorship is sacrilege according to my tradition, I sometimes use these in the same way, as vile words in their own right. They work beautifully in this manner: "Censor that!" "Go delete yourself!"
No attempt to legislate language has ever been known to succeed. For an amusing real-life example, look at the attempt to "protect the purity of the French language" which has done nothing but create an ever-widening gap between written and spoken French ... and lots of people also write French the way they speak it.

Basically, the censors can try to block access to information and the appearance of certain words/concepts. This is annoying and to some minimal extent effective. But intelligent and creative people will always find ways around this sort of interference. One final hilarious note: watch the (largely not-very-computer-literate) adults try to foil the fingers of kids raised on (and to some extent, by) computers. The little geniuses will probably just hack through the filters like a swordfish through a gill net. Washington wouldn't be half as anxious to strangle cyberspace if it weren't full of clever hackers and wizards. Not all kids are hackers, but nothing in cyberspace is ever impervious, including these newfangled filter things.

To discuss subjects which the censors consider networthy, one only has to invent and spread a new discourse they won't recognize. Repeat as needed once they figure out the latest code. This will work for magic, Pagan religions, sex, abortion, political criticisms, and other popular concepts the censors would like to file under Thoughtcrime. Their attempts to restrict language will only result in ever more clever ways to discuss the very things they want us to shut up about. In short, they've pewed the scrooch. <grin> Filters won't catch spoonerisms like that either.

Addendum

By now censorware has grown and evolved, garnering support through attempts to mandate its use in various libraries, schools, and other public information access ports. This kind of unConstitutional behavior is well worth fighting against. Some censorware now blocks entire sites instead of just specific words, and like the word lists most of the site lists are kept secret -- although they too can be partially exposed by empirical testing. This means the censors are blocking people instead of concepts, which is even more illegal. Various court cases are currently in the works to combat these alarming trends, and you can follow their progress on any of the free-speech forum Websites, newsgroups, mailing lists, etc. Linguistic evolution may provide a ready means of evading blockage but it's still a lot of work, and I'd rather not be obliged to go to all that extra effort just to get my basic ideas aired.

For those of you who would like to follow up on this essay with some further reading: I took my two main xenolinguistic references from The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand and A First Dictionary and Grammar of Laadan (second edition) by Suzette Haden Elgin. Additional inspiration came from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker.

A detailed review of censorware is located at The Censorware Project.

Another essay on censorware, Trying out censorware by Charles Pappas, is located on the ZDNet Website.

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Art on this page is from the "Whiteflower" set, at Winter's Pages

The URL for this page is http://www.worthlink.net/~ysabet/spirit/censorware.html and it was last updated on November 21, 1998.