See, I guess that we're agreeing to something. Of course imposing a censoring infrastructure on others is worse by some orders of magnitude. I was never disputing that. Neverheless, he (the EU) who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones. Would you really believe in the honesty of someone who criticizes those bloody hooligans who go on a rampage after some ball game, if the very same person regularly beat up his own wife and kids? Probably not, I guess.

Yeah, citizens of those states censoring their web will certainly rejoice: “Phew, at least the US don't censor it!” Are you really just now trying to justify censorship, because there are worse ways to pull it off?

Are you familiar with the phrase “Principiis obsta”?

So, I gather that you are okay with internet censorship, as long as your government controls it, right?

By definition.

That's my point. The EU basically says that they have no problem with censorship as long as they decide which sites to censor. And yes, this is hypocrisy.

Yup. Tools that are used locally on the computer. Like this AOL thing. If they were to censor the net in order to protect children from seeing this imagery, shouldn't they be censoring ALL sorts of porn, instead? I don't understand your logic.

Spending money in order to develop a censoring infrastructure instead of spending it for things like rehab or prevention doesn't protect a single child. Google Cleanternet.

I already stated that I wouldn't want to compare the two approaches and I totally understand your point. My point, however was: They basically say “Censorship is cool with us, as long as we stay in control”. And this rhetoric is wrong on so many levels.

Göring said similar things years after:

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

History doesn't repeat, it rhymes.

Doesn't matter. Taking a stance against censorship while giving its own members permission to do exactly the same thing is hypocrisy.

No, but slamming the US for proposing a law that includes censorship (regardless of the approach) while permitting their own members to censor their own citizens' access, is hypocrisy.

Reminds me of our beloved four horsemen.

At the same time they release a directive that includes optional web censoring. For the sake of our children, of course!

There was an awesome Extra Credits video exactly about this issue, very worth watching: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/metrics