Matthew Hughes

Now, I am a libertarian. I think we should all be allowed to do and say whatever we want, albeit as long as it does not hurt anyone. Sadly, some people disagree.

I also go to a college where freedom of speech is severely restricted. You can say whatever you want, so long as it is compatible with the school ordaned idea of correctness. Furthermore, the school blocks most web pages, including those which offer an opposing point of view to societal and christian (I go to a catholic college) norms.

I noticed that sites such as Torrentfreak (which is a polite, well written blog which argues about copyright law from a pro-piracy point of view) are blocked, whereas you can easily access the sites of the MPAA, RIAA, BPI and other industry bodies are not blocked. Furthermore, the school uses a word capture system, which pedantically takes screenshots, thus interrupting my work, for the most trivial of words, such as ‘black’ and ‘dutch’.

Their actions to censor the net do not solely lie on their own network. They often extend to networks such as Facebook. A while back I made a facebook group about not being able to do my work because of my college due to their insane filtration system on their network. I was polite. I did not swear. I did not get angry. I was coherent and I did not name any teachers.

One week later, I was confronted by both my headmaster and one of the deputy heads (on separate occasions) demanding I take the group down. I was pretty fucking scared at this point, so I complied and took the site down, and also posted an apology on my blog (I hasten to add, of my own free will. I was pretty scared and I wanted them to call the dogs off, metaphorically speaking. Also, since I now have my new domain, my previous posts were deleted, so don’t expect to find it without a tool like the internet archive or google cache). I pretty much surrendered.

Why were they allowed to do this? What I done was legitimate, honest and I was not hurting anyone. It was presented as a petition, and I intended to present it to a senior authority. Instead I was humiliated, intimidated and forced to compromise my freedom of speech, on the freest of platforms. The internet.

I have decided that if I write something controversial on my blog, which does not compromise my ethics, hurt anyone or is perfectly legal and honest, I will not remove it out of principle. I don’t care if they write to WordPress (who will probably decline to remove my blog considering that I am a paying customer, and I am protected since the servers are located in the USA and as such protected by the First Amendment) or Nominet, who will likely decline to take action against me as well.

If you somehow do manage to take my site down, I will move my blog to the PRQ ISP in Sweden, where it is protected by Swedish law, and Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Anakata, who do not bend down to people who want to trample over the basic rights that are such an integral part of Western society.

If you threaten to show this blog to my parents, who are unaware of it, I will still not remove it. So what if they find out that I had a girlfriend for four months without telling them? So what if they read me drop a few ‘f’ bombs? I wrote it, and it is out there. I am not afraid.

You can’t stop me.