Australia wants a leap backwards – censor the Internet
When I first heard about it last weekend, it made my stomach turn. I had just moved to a country that I thought was perfect in most senses – if the higher broad band prices and slower connections that I had gotten used to didn’t count. Internet to me is like a life line. It helps me breath easier. And now, they want to tell me that they want to control my breathing. They want to make sure, that I don’t say anything that they don’t approve. Seriously, if this bill goes through, we’re moving to New Zealand. (Prepare for a flood NZ!)
The politicians say this is to protect the children from harmful content on the internet. They want to filter out anything that is inappropriate for a 15 year old or younger, according to the ACMA regulations. Why don’t you just pass a law that parents have to install a content filter for their own computer if you insist on the child safety issue?
And if it is a ploy to protect the children, what about us that have none? If we want to watch porn online we should be allowed to! What about non-filtered ISP’s for people who don’t have children? Should parents who have children be still allowed to access the net unfiltered if they are not concerned with the “baddies” or are capable to filter the content themselves.
I agree that it might be wise to OFFER a filtered service, but should it be compulsory? Good heavens, no. That just as a mere thought is appalling and sends the message of a 3rd world country out to the rest of the world. Even if it did bring no relevant harm to the user, the mere thought of a filtered Internet goes against everything I believe in, and while the world is getting more and more tolerable and liberal, this kind of approaches don’t really go down do well in International image of Australia. Internationally, people won’t be interested HOW Australia does it or WHAT is filtered, all they will hear is “Australia sensors the Internet just like China” and that’s it. China, I tell you. The country that forged a child’s singing voice.
Now if you have ever seen the Google keywords and phrases that your blog is picked up with as search results, you may also raise this question. If my blog is found with phrase “child nudity porn” is it then filtered out completely? Rest assured, nowhere on this site, or any of my other sites, have I published child porn, but clearly, I have used the word, child, nudity and porn in one place or another, sometimes even in the same post. HOW is this content filtered anyway?
What really grosses me out on this is having moral values forced upon me, in a free democratic country! The Internet is the place where you can find support, friends, soul mates and be free & yourself, and that should include the possibility of viewing and sharing material that some people would find objectionable. Should this filter be installed, who will then control what is filtered out? One day it’s adult content, the next day it’s anti-religious material and then political issues… Content warnings on TV are enough to piss me off, but I understand them. TV cannot be filtered on a device level, but your computer can. I think we should keep it at that.
More on the topic by politicians and by Aussie Bloggers.
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I am worried about this. Censorship has never been a good thing. Content warnings on things are fine though. Some brief information on what one can expect to see in something is okay because there may be certain things I might not want to see – so a little forewarning would be nice.
…but outright censorship. Someone deciding for me what I can see and what I can say? That is troubling indeed. I have never let anyone dictate my thoughts or actions, and I don’t intend to start letting them now!
I feel like I need to make a note to myself to never use certain words now, because if that’s all it takes to get me restricted from public consumption… well, that doesn’t sit well with me.
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Any legislation with ostensibly good intentions is fraught with possibilities of arbitrariness in enforcement and this could be true of laws regulating internet content; so you & I could be the ones hit by such arbitrariness!
From a different angle, as you have shown to admit it would be wise to filter the content how do you visualize the possibility of two kinds of service-filtered and non-filtered being offered at the same time to avoid compulsory impositions?
Filtering content by parents is hardly effective: children access net other than at home if they find anything curiously exciting.
Hmm..as a concerned parent, I find merit in the proposition while I also feel personal liberties merit accommodation.
In the end, the discretion & judgment of those who get empowered determines what you get.
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Sometimes installing such filter could also make matters worse from the point of view of protecting children. A lot of children are a lot more handy with the net than their parents are, and would be capable of bypassing the filter anyway. (A little study to the matter revealed a fairly easy bypass strategy.) So the kids bypass the filter and the parents are blissfully unaware of such possibility trusting the filter to do the parenting for them. Wopsee, snuff films, here they come!