"If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

While Thomas Jefferson felt pretty strongly about freedom of speech, it is unlikely that he had in mind a listings magazine for a 20th-century European capital. But even allowing for its more lewd advertisements, he would almost certainly have championed In Dublin's right to publication last week.

The six-month ban on the magazine by the Censorship Board, on the grounds that it had been "usually or frequently . . . indecent or obscene", was roundly attacked by, among others, the National Union of Journalists which described it as "an attempt to drag Ireland back to the dark ages".

The ban was also condemned by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties as "acutely outmoded" and by the Vienna-based International Press Institute as "counter to democratic principles of freedom of expression". When asked if anything should be banned, and if so what, all these bodies found themselves grappling with more difficult questions.

Donncha O'Connell, director of the ICCL, says he "would not be absolutist on censorship. Very few civil liberty issues are that simple." While he thinks the most offensively obscene material should be censored or at least regulated, "the difficulty is that defining what is `obscene' is highly subjective. As a concept I am not sure what would be used as the benchmark."

The Irish secretary of the NUJ, Eoin Roynane, also thinks some check should be kept on the most offensive material, be it pornographic or inciting towards hatred. "Obscene," he says, should be defined by "the prevailing ethos of the day."

He advocates a press ombudsman with "the power to order publications to print prominent apologies" and to levy penalties. Its establishment would have to happen in tandem with reform of the libel laws, a "real look at standards" in the press. It would have a quasi-legal standing, he says, where, if ignored, it would have the power to bring offenders to court.

Ursula Owen is the editor-in-chief of the British quarterly Index magazine, regarded by anti-censorship campaigners as something of a bible. Censorship, she says, "doesn't achieve anything". Even the availability of hard-core pornography she says is "fine".

"Censoring it only drives it underground," she says. On the other hand images of illegal acts such as the abuse of children, women being raped or bestiality should just be illegal, she continues. Their purveyors should be charged as criminals.

"But in the case of pornography, there is an awful lot of nannying going on. The world is full of nasty things and banning images of them won't make them go away. I'm not saying there isn't a problem with children seeing images of sex acts. Adults must be vigilant to protect them."

Nor does she think pornography necessarily leads to the "objectification" of women, saying other forces in society do this far more efficiently. The rapist Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, drew inspiration from medical text books, she says, "and you can't ban medical text books."

She agrees with O'Connell that perhaps access to extreme pornography should be restricted. He suggests that such magazines might be wrapped in cellophane or accessible only on subscription.

The area with which Owen has the greatest problem is "hate-talk".

"The whole area of incitement to hatred worries me. But I tend to think hate-talk should only be banned where there is no room for robust argument against it, where it effectively gives carte blanche permission to hate." In general ideas, no matter how odious, are better "out on the table".

Of course, many feel the whole notion of censorship is almost ridiculous in the information age. As international borders become less relevant in the free flow of ideas, the authorities in any one state have less power to control the images and words its citizens consume.

This, says Owen, makes "talking about the implications of censorship" all the more important. "It's no good saying `If we don't like it, ban it'." That, she said, is a society putting its collective head in the sand by not facing all that's out there, and not talking about what kind of society it wants to be.

"People have to be treated as grown-ups," she says, and censoring legal ideas and images is a slippery slope.

"It is vital that people talk about the implications of censorship. At least in America, because of the First Amendment, they are forced to do that."

Perhaps that is what Jefferson intended.