Censorship by payment platforms in Australia

*Payment platforms [in Australia] [including credit card companies] demand services remove NSFW [games] after open letter from Australian anti-porn group Collective Shout, triggering accusations of censorship

This censorship is one added injustice in an aspect of life that is unjust through and through.

The platforms that were forced to remove some games make users identify themselves and run nonfree software to get games, and track what each person does. They are unjust.

Likewise for the payment platforms — using them to pay online requires running nonfree software, except on a few sites such as fsf.org where we avoid that for moral reasons.

The games themselves are also unjust nonfree software. That applies to all the games there, those that were removed, and those that have not been removed.

They have DRM, too, to prevent forbidden sharing; DRM is unjust.

change.org partakes of the same injustice — one needs to run nonfree software to sign any of its petitions. I've seen petitions there that I agreed with, but I won't sign them that way.

I do not tolerate any of these injustices — I "just say no." As a result, I will never have any of the games from those platforms on my computer.

But even though this new censorship will never affect me directly. I am concerned about it. When censorship is accepted in any area of life, it tends to spread. Some day it may spread to activities which are not inherently unjust. And it illustrates the danger of the design of digital payment system, and of nonfree software that users can't just share with each other.

By the way, where in Australia is NSFW? Has it anything to do with NSW? ;-}.

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