Need a new word for non-violent-censorship

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I often have the same difficulty when speaking with
Objectivists.  They define "censorship" as "silencing the
speaker by force", which is a fine and useful definition, but
suppose we want to talk about a similar phenomenon which does
not involve force?  For example, the magnate who owns all the
newspapers, television stations, bookstores and movie theatres
in a small town decides that never again will homosexuality be
publically mentioned in any of these venues.  Force?  No.
"Censorship"?  Not by _that_ definition, but what _is_ it?


We need a new word, or else we have to continue using
"censorship" to mean both of those things.  I sometimes use
"violent-censorship" and "non-violent-censorship" in
conversation.


As long as we continue to try to overload "censorship" we will
waste much of our dialogue energy on semantic quibbling or pure
misunderstanding.


Regards,

Zooko




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> I often have the same difficulty when speaking with
> Objectivists.  They define "censorship" as "silencing the
> speaker by force", which is a fine and useful definition, but
> suppose we want to talk about a similar phenomenon which does
> not involve force?  For example, the magnate who owns all the
> newspapers, television stations, bookstores and movie theatres
> in a small town decides that never again will homosexuality be
> publically mentioned in any of these venues.  Force?  No.
> "Censorship"?  Not by _that_ definition, but what _is_ it?

     "Monopoly", or editorial policy and it is solved by buying a press of 
some kind, from a letter press to a photocopier, and printing all the news 
he does, and doesn't.

> We need a new word, or else we have to continue using

     No, we just need to use the words we have properly. 

> "censorship" to mean both of those things.  I sometimes use
> "violent-censorship" and "non-violent-censorship" in
> conversation.

     "Violent-censorship" is when you [shoot beat kill] the speaker, "non-
violent" is when you imprison, or consficate the means of speech/replication of 
speach, or otherwise "silence" without physcial force. Then you have censorship 
by intimidation, which is a little harder to qualify. If I threaten to burn 
your press if you talk about Crypto, or print Crypto algorythms, is that 
censorship? IMO, yes. If you _choose_ not to discuss Crypto because you 
understand (or are afraid of) the implications of it, that is NOT censorship,
any more than my refusal to discuss sports because I can't understand the appeal
or because I think that sports are generally a bad thing.  
 
     Choice is not censorship, removal of choice is. 


Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com

Bryce wrote:
> I often have the same difficulty when speaking with
> Objectivists.  They define "censorship" as "silencing the
> speaker by force", which is a fine and useful definition, but
> suppose we want to talk about a similar phenomenon which does
> not involve force?  For example, the magnate who owns all the
> newspapers, television stations, bookstores and movie theatres
> in a small town decides that never again will homosexuality be
> publically mentioned in any of these venues.  Force?  No.
> "Censorship"?  Not by _that_ definition, but what _is_ it?
> We need a new word, or else we have to continue using
> "censorship" to mean both of those things.  I sometimes use
> "violent-censorship" and "non-violent-censorship" in conversation.
> As long as we continue to try to overload "censorship" we will
> waste much of our dialogue energy on semantic quibbling or pure misunderstanding.

I don't see how you can say this.  I was brought up by this wonderful system (U.S.)
to believe that censorship was necessarily non-violent.  It was only when I became
conscious of "Assassination as the Ultimate Form of Censorship" that I saw the
broader connections.

Seems to me you'd want to come up with different words for violent censorship instead,
but then again, as in the above paragraph, we already have those.