Why Dailymotion Censorship (or any other form of censorship) Will Lead to Nowhere?

An Open Letter to Mr. Scissors!

Dear Mr. Scissors,

First of all, I'm gonna tell you why you 404'ed dailymotion.com: you're so afraid of this new wave of Bourguibism among us. With the spread of all his videos and speeches, all your attempts to erase an era are simply doomed to failure. By dwarfing Bourguiba's image and status as a natural leader and the builder of modern Tunisia, by preventing the Tunisian people from exploring the oeuvre of Bourguiba, you made them even more ravenous to learn as much as possible about him. Too bad for you! Bourjouliyya, you SUCK!

Let me tell you something else. Blogging is like free market. The entry level is so low that anybody with an internet access can set up his or her blog in a matter of minutes. If in addition he/she masters English, he/she can take his/her voice around the planet and trigger a chain of reactions where thousands and thousands can read him/her, reply and themselves forward the piece of information at hand to even more thousands or millions around the globe in a blink of an eye! Too fast for you, eh? Maybe you should take a break or retire altogether! Maybe you could even join us since you're too good with blogs!

Just look at every online counter at the bottom or on the side of every blog, Mr Scissors! Does it scare you to see all those users from all those countries some of which you haven't even heard of? Yes they’re reading me and they’ll bounce the information back over and over again. So why on earth should you trigger a snow ball in the first place?! Why do you mess up with the bee's hive and then whine about being stung?!! Why the hell are you trying to trim, cut and delete when you don’t have anything to be afraid or ashamed of? Or do you?!

You know! People in the morning no longer log into the routine News web sites “à la Reuters”, “Let’s leave the politically correct news and the diplomatic jargon for a little later!” They say. People just want real time data right from inside the event, from Ground Zero. What better could they turn to than the alternative media? Blogs!

If in addition the blogger has a digital camera with a mic and a couple of free softwares out there then he/she can have at the end of the day a whole newspaper (a blog) where the whole team is himself/herself, may be even doing interviews with people you wish had been rotting in your deepest prison cells. Everyone becomes a reporter. I know it's a nightmare for you but could you censor everyone? I don’t think so but good luck anyway!

Time magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year was You. Yes! It’s you, me, him, her and everybody. This is to highlight the final shift from institutions to individuals. Tom Friedman, the well known globalization evangelist, stated that we are living Globalization version 3.0 where the world is the playground of Super Empowered Individuals, individuals who can spread their ideas and ideology with a couple of clicks away. You can’t win this war by lurking and hiding, you’ll end up wasting your time without getting what you want! It’s like concealing the sun by just covering your eyes or dipping your head into the sand! Welcome to my world Mr Scissors! You can no longer impose your own rules in this new world, remember, it’s the free market and you’re playing against everybody else. So just let the market work on its own, ok? Good!

Dear Mr/ Scissors,

In the past Cold War system [where the world was still split by thick and high walls], leaders forced citizens to compare themselves to their fathers. They would say: are you doing better than your father? Yes? Can you afford to buy bread, milk and tomatoes? Yes? OK then Shut up!

But now (decent and smart) people no longer compare themselves to their fathers. They have so much information; they’re much more open and thus much more demanding. Now they compare themselves to their neighbors everywhere because they can track them all over the world on television, over satellites, on DVDs and through the Internet. They want more than bread, milk and tomatoes; they aspire for freedom and democracy: the two keys to a fast-track society in a 21^st century where dictatorship and all its evils (nepotism, corruption, red tape, censorship, etc) are synonyms of being left behind!

Mr. Scissors,

Have you heard about that game? The “Rock, Paper, Scissors” game where Scissors cut Paper and so they win? It is the game you are playing with us except for a little detail! We are no longer paper! We are everywhere, virtual and elusive (yet brave to look under every rock and speak out!) . Never before or since have we been so ubiquitous, fast and efficient!

Poor you! You remind of the Coyote and the Road Runner! You can not get hold of us like you did for a long time with all the papers you didn’t like, we are no longer waiting for our readers in newsstands where you can buy all the papers you don’t like early in the morning before your citizens can put their hands on! We learned to adapt, it’s us who go to our readers, all over the place, 24/7. We now are E-papers, which turns out to be similar to Rocks…which - by the very same rules of the game - blunt the scissors! You’ve just lost again!

I bet you love the free market Mr. Scissors. You know why! It’s the same market that let you before purchase those sophisticated tools you use to censor my blog! You see it’s a good and a fair game where there’s a fine line between losing and winning!

Still, I think you must be a very smart person! You’re probably using cutting edge (censorship) technology so you obviously do recognize the marvels you can achieve once empowered by technology...and so do we!

Censoring a blog is like trying to raise the Berlin wall again! HELLO! It’s all over since 1989 and I’m NOT sorry you’re losing amigo!

Long time for censors (and scissors), we’re the Bloggers!