Censorship

I hatehatehate censorship. Flat-out.
I live in Kuwait, a Muslim conservative country so basically... music, books, (local) TV is pretty much all censored. It affects my life greatly (not in a good way), especially the one on music (I think everyone pretty much knows how I went apeshit when I heard that MCR were banned here).

Sure, some censorship is needed (like for underage children and the like... but then again, kids these days know much more about life than we did, and this is me speaking from an older sister perspective). But that's why there's ratings. In some countries they actually abide by ratings, while in places, like where I live, they don't give a damn: you're 10 and you want a snuff film? Sure, just show me the money. (the forbidden fruit affect: when you know it's banned, you want it more) >_>

Also, censorship irks me the most when it's relevant to restraining freedom of thought, speech, and religion. For instancte, from what I've seen living here, you can talk shit about the government all you want but you can't even write a letter about the ruling family. (some kids -I think months ago- bashed the crown prince on some random site and someone found it, they got traced and identified. I'm not sure what happened to them, but I think it wasn't pretty >_>) And same thing about the media. Media censors what society doesn't want to see, the ugly side of things.

Censorship -in my humble opinion- is society's way of blocking off what they don't want to see for several reasons: cultural, religios etc. In the same way it isn't fair, because it's relies on the individual opinions of certain people who decide what's right or wrong, what's good for the public to see or what isn't. It relies on society's 'norms' and sometimes 'laws'.

Basically, yeah. I think too much censorship is bad for your skin

Censorship is unfair in many occasions but to oppose it for the wrong reasons is just as bad... for instance, the cause of 'freedom of opinion at all costs', 'freedom of speech at all costs' etc
in fact the idea of 'freedom at all costs' is in my opinion one of the major problems in modern society's thinking... almost like a decaying of ideals where one concept 'freedom' is placed above basic human rights to equality..
Since when was it a human right to slander? or publish misleading information? or hurt another human?
Compare that to the right of a human to be treated fairly and equally (the reason human rights were established in the first place?)
But that's excatly the way people are being led to think nowadays. of course this extends to many topics eg. abortion, euthanasia. when 'human rights' begin to infringe other rights, a line has to be drawn.

I live in the US (duh.) and it seems to me that "freedom of speech" isn't as much "freedom of speech" as it is "freedom of speech as long as you don't do this long list of things."

However, I do think a tiny bit of censorship is needed, just to keep order.

I do agree with you on this one. I mean, musically and artfully (and by this I mean cinematics, books, and actual artwork), I think people should be able to speak their mind.
Politically and religiously, there needs to be censorship because otherwise (like you said) wars will start.

The popular world is so censored, but so not at the same time. Like, the fact that they don't want us to know what is really happening in our wars, but the fact they let celebrities pose nude on the cover of magazines?

They really needs to get their act together.

I do agree with whats being said here. censorship is good to an extent.
Nowdays the convernment is censoring everything. To no use though
All anyone has to do is get on the internet and there is pretty much everything from cp to snuff and everything else between on here.