Damn The Censors!

Anyone that reads this blog often enough knows that I’ve no love for censorship. I down-right loath it. Freedom of speech is the apex of [*hr*].

There is not a situation I can think of whereby I feel a person should have their ability to speak on any topic they desire taken away from them.

I don’t care if you are regurgitating the most vile and racist profanities that your ignorant mind can think of – there’s not a person on this planet that should have the power or privilege to tell you what you can and cannot say.

Unfortunately, the robots that govern the country I call home often see things differently. And so it is I am happy to announce my first WordPress plugin:

(as in, don’t be so damn censortive).

I’ve been denied access to my own site a number of times because something I’ve written, or something someone’s said in the comments has been deemed “unfit for the eyes of the peons” by the dorks that govern “The Switch”.

However, I’ve found a way around it. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and they may damn well be right. This plugin uses text-to-image technology to convert pre-defined words into image files that look darn similar to the original text. By doing so, the robots that censor Web pages are unable to “see” the offending words (as they’re not words, but images).

This plugin is perfect for anyone that tends to get caught in the cross-fire of what vocabulary is Commie-kosher and what is tripping up the censors. Now when I want to speak about the [*dl*] and [*tib*] or what happened on [*j4*] in [*TAM*], I can and my blog’s not going to get shutdown because of it.

If you blog via WordPress and you suffer from the same censorship woes that I do, I encourage you to check out this plugin. There’s more information on how it works on the official Censortive homepage, including an explanation of how it uses codewords so that the offending words don’t ever touch your database or URL (for an extra layer of blocking prevention).

It’s still very much in beta testing, and I welcome any feedback or bugs you may find.

Cross posted at Lost Laowai

11 Responses

  1. Hey Ryan, Great release congrats on finally finishing it. This idea is way better than having the whole page as an image. This outta keep that bitch Net Nanny out of your blog and hopefully away from your front door.

  2. I’m sorry to go there but it looks like shopgirl has an acute case of Downes Syndrome. I know, I shouldn’t say it, but look.

  3. @AnotherLaowai: It’s that front door one that makes me sweat at night.

    @Fossilsaraus: Haha, how I missed that post on my daily trips to read about shopping I just don’t know… wait… wait…

    @Juhuacha: I swear I didn’t intend it that way ;-).

  4. What a great plugin! I think I’m going to need to install this on some of my current china related blogs. My writers always want to be on the cutting edge and write semi-controversial (at least in china) materials and now I can! Does it allow me to change the color of text, and bg? Also will it parse our comments?

  5. Hey John, there’s currently no comment support, but it is possible for future versions. the text’s background is transparent, and so displays as whatever colour is beneath it. The text is completely colour-customizable.

  6. Hey – I am in agreement with you. The first time I heard of China “web censorship” was when someone told me sites that warned against hospitals and doctors using organs EXTORTED from healthy Wushu practitioners, later became banned from access within China.

    I was shocked that such a thing can happen.

    I believe that the most well-behaved person who never regurgitate profanities have at least once in their life, had them IN their mind. Afterall, we’re all humans.

    We can choose to say ‘DARN’ instead of ‘DAMN’. ‘Faeces’ instead of ‘shit’. ‘Pea brain’ instead of “stupid’. Funnier and less insulting ways of expression although flaming can’t be avoided. (Freedom of speech is at times “used” irresponsibly.)

    THANKS for revealing the wordpress plugin. I’ve just started using WordPress – so please feel free to comment in my blog too. 🙂

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