Quote:
Originally Posted by elcreative
The use of all-caps to highlight important passages is specifically designed to irritate the person they are aimed at in the hope that they would actually read what has been written and understand it... it's nearly worked this time but not quite so I'll leave you to continue with having missed some of the point as you clearly believe that accuracy is a waste of time... 
And frankly, I don't see a lot of speech on TPB, just a lot of links to allow the D/Ling of files, many, at best, of dubious sourcing... now blocking access to MR, whilst leading to a quieter, less argumentative life, would definitely be infringing on free speech... |
I was less irritated and more filled with a profound sense of pity that an adult would feel the need to engage in such boorish behaviour, behaviour that only served to undermine his point. I am convinced by good arguments backed by facts, not ad hominems. Perhaps as a response to this post you can try childish name calling.
Really, I'm not sure why you feel the need to harp on this point, having already agreed that censorship in-fact is occurring.
As for speech on The Pirate Bay, even if you take the position that hyperlinks aren't speech (this argument is stronger or weaker depending on your jurisdiction), it's not hard to find examples of content that is clearly speech. See
here,
here and
here. You can make the argument that The Pirate Bay should be blocked even if blocking it is infringing on freedom of speech, but I don't see how the argument can be made that it's okay to block
because it's not speech at all; if it's not speech, then what is it?
I don't particularly like The Pirate Bay and don't use it, but I don't believe blocking it at the behest of copyrightholders is an appropriate response or serves the UK public.
Edit
I also find it disturbing that a website can be blocked without the website owners being represented in the judicial process. Without providing The Pirate Bay the ability to challenge the record companies suing the ISPs, it's difficult to see how the process used is supportable from a justice perspective.