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Our lives are being controlled. We are not allowed to do what we want. Part of this censorship is understandable but when governments treat us like children and limit our freedom, it has gone too far .
There are all kinds of reasons why theres censorship. Sometimes it is a question of protecting our children. Some think that when children watch violence they become violent themselves. Other times it is a question of governments wanting restict our freedom of choice and make us react like it is favoured in that country. I can't understand why adults can't watch what they want. They should be able to deal with this kind of information. It would be understandable if it were a wartime .
Censorship affect our lives every day. Television, videos, newspapers, books and music are being censored. Some of the controll comes from the governments but for examle the newspapers do a bit of censoring of their own .
Different countries have different systems of censorship. It is often so that when one government steps aside, the new one decides to change the system. This has happened especially in the United Kingdom. You can never tell which films are cut because they might be uncut one week but cut the next. What is odd about The United States and The United Kingdom is that they don't seem to mind the violence in film but if a breast was shown in a film, it would be terrible. Something also odd is that in these countries some television bosses have evcen been fired when a four-letter appeared in one of their programs. Especially in these english speaking countries the authorities seem to need to please everyone. There are all kinds of groups that try to influence the decision makers and sometimes they succeed. Finland has its own meddlers. A minister of ours wanted to rescue us, for once, from the terrors of a horror film and asked the finnish television station not to show this film. And of course they did what was asked of them even though they wouldn't have had to. There is one period of our history that wasn't revealed to us until now. Our president was getting a bit senile and old and couldn ' stay on his feet but our newspapers and television decided not to report these things. I guess it was due to the situation .
There are some strange examples of cersorship. For example in the United States some artists were not allowed to sing some words in their songs. Also even the bible isn't safe from censorship. The situation is pretty good here in Finland because the laws aren't uphold that efficiently and this makes it possible to buy these films in stores. Some stores have even specialized in these films. What is strange about the laws in Finland is the right to privacy that has gone a bit too far. In the last few weeks the newspapers have talked about childporno and the right to have in one's possession videos or photos where children are being exploited. For some strange reason this is still allowed in this country. I think here is where the line should be drawn. There it would no longer be a question of restricting our liberties but it would be a question of protecting our children from this filth .
What censorship does is that it makes people angry. It encourages people to brake these laws. Some people even order their films from abroad because they are censored in their native country. I should hope that there would be some reason used in these matters and that the authorities wouldn't be hypocratical .
