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Internet Censorship in Australia?
Enaku writes "Right wing Australian Christian political party Family First wants an annual levy of $7 to $10 on all internet users in Australia to fund a $45 million mandatory national internet filtering scheme aimed at blocking pornographic and offensive content at server level. (Read Family First's Policy Statement on Internet Pornography and Children (pdf) ) Great firewall of Australia, here we come!"
These people are fascists and need to be marginalized. They want to take away our freedoms. Fuck them.
Am I the only one to think that there are two contradictions in that sentence? If not, Ausse politics has got to be a confusing system...
What about the children? WHO WILL SAVE THE CHILDREN?
:) )
"Why is the Internet Industry allowed to avoid their responsibilities on this?"
Why the hell aren't you watching your kids? What the hell ever happened to active parenting? If you don't want your kids to see such content then keep them off the damn internet,or at least monitor what they do online.....Furthermore, filtering may do more harm than good by keeping useful information blocked anyway............The "internet industry" is composed of a hell of a lot of people, and there is no one person to lay such responsibility on anyway.....The internet is not a cable tv show or a movie - it wasn't designed with a ratings system in mind.........
I found it odd that they cite plenty of numbers on how often kids had accessed pornography, the survey simply stated -
In November last year Dr Michael Flood of the Australia Institute cited a new study showing that concerns about pornography and children were warranted: "Children who regularly see violent pornography are more likely to be sexually aggressive and to believe that sexual abuse is normal".
What study? What percentages? What numbers?
Finally, From TFA -
"This may have the result of putting cost pressures on some of the smaller ISPs, but there are arguably too many of these at the moment, and adequate competition could be maintained with 30 ISPs rather than the hundreds in existence now," it said.
Screw the small guys, huh?
(Sorry bout the long rant, can't sleep
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
Hey Pharmboy, get it now?
free speech
real democracy
respect for other people
This is a new form of "left wing" that I was previously unaware of.
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<factorial_nine> GOOD LUCK, BITCH.
I think that it's applicable
I know people..::cough:: that wouldn't use the internet if they couldn't get pr0n off it
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Fundamentalist anything is bad. I don't care what these people beleive, just so long as they don't force me to do anything.
A conservative christian party in australian politics would be a right wing party according to the convention.
Official GOD FAQ.
From the article:
Family First admitted the cost of the filtering scheme could be prohibitive for small ISPs, but said the scheme should proceed regardless.
We wish to practice futility at the cost of other families' livelihood?
But seriously, is this possible? Is it even legal under current law?
The party wants the internet filtered at server level, warning that children exposed to online pornography could exhibit "disturbed, aggressive or sexualised behaviour".
i 100% agree. we should start by blocking the bible. it's full of obscene, graphically explicit sexual passages and extreme violence.
there's plenty of examples of people exhibiting disturbed, aggressive and sexualized behaviour after reading the bible.
if porn is going to be filtered, there can be no exceptions. no online bible for you!
A religous group wants force its delusions on the rest of the world by passing restrictive laws.
All in the name of family and children, of course.
Censoring the Internet is like censoring the telephone system.
Both are information tools, use them with care.
Somebody probably noticed that 'Family First' are allied with the Liberal Party.
;)
In Australia, the 'Liberals' are the right-wing party, something that confuses many septics (not that that's difficult
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
As an Australian, I have one thing to say;
/.
Fuck the children.
This is the job of the parents, and the blame for any problems due to lack of supervision lie squarely with them. I'm not paying a red cent for anyone elses irresponsibility.
Thankfully, Fundies like this dont really have much of a say in politics down here, so hopefully this wont really be heard anywhere outside of
I'd be more than happy to help you off your cross.
See here's the thing about your bogus framing of the debate. There has never been an example of an atheist (outside of a Stalinist country) demanding a plaque declaring "There is NO god." be hung in every school. No children have been asked to declare God dead as part of a loyalty oath, in a political effort for immoral politicians to attempt to appear moral.
So give it a rest, Christ could use a day off from your imaginined persecution.
#1 - Family First are a RIGHT-WING neo-christian fringe party, playing the percentages in the bible belt suburbs of the major cities ( cf http://www.hillsong.com/) - they'll poll +/-5% in those areas, not a real threat in the lower house, although they may get some sway if they get the balance of power in upper house, but I doubt it and) , it's anti-competitive, hard to maintain and largely ineffective.
#2 - they'll get this past on a cold day in hell, read their comments about smaller ISPs for instance (eg they're expendable - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/27/net_levy/
It's an attention seeking episode imho
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Blows lots of money down the drain. 45 million for a system that will be easily circumvented by kids who are more tech savvy then their parents. If China, a nation dependant on controlling all media, can't stop people from getting around their internal content firewall, what do these christian wack jobs think 45 million dollars will get them?
I grew up in the days before the Internet. Was I exposed to pornography? Yes. In fact most, if not all, of my contemporaries were exposed to pornography. Where did this pornography come from? Well believe it or not, there was a time when pornographic material came in these things called magazines. That's right - magazines!
What used to happen is that one kid would nick one of these magazines and bring it to school. Everyone else would borrow said magazines (the rest is left as an exercise for the reader).
The interesting point is where these magazines came from. Strangers on the streets? No. Mad pornographers trying to hook impressionable kids on their filthy wares? No. Evil devil worshippers and socialists trying to destroy the fabric of society? No. The magazines were nicked from - you guessed it - parents.
Teenagers and adults have always sought out erotic material. It was magazines in my day, the Internet today. Family First, nor any other right wing party, are not going to be changing that fact of life too soon.
One last thing - if you are Australian and interested in IT related policy issues (mandating open file formats, IT procurement policies, censorship etc) please consider voting for the Australian Democrats - if not for the House of Reps then the Senate. Yes they've taken a pounding, but they remain the only party in Australian politics that are dedicated to ensuring accountability in Government and the only party that has aggresively pursued IT policy. Yes some of the others are trying to jump on board the OSS bandwagon (Greens, ALP etc), however the only party to have looked at these issues seriously, and proposed legislation are the Democrats. When they go - so will an accountable Senate.
I come from a LAN down under
Where the packets flow and routers chunder
I guess you are a Democrat?
Get your Unix fortune now!
Australia is a very secular country, so Christian parties are notable. Also notable is that they are conservative. This is something that consistently baffles me. The New Testament's doctrine is patently pacifistic and egalitarian (as opposed to that of the Old Testament, which was superseded by this). Neither of these are traits of conservatism as a political ideology. Christ didn't kill anyone in response to their wrongdoing. Christ didn't brand people as irrevocably and unequivocally evil, either; he said anyone could come to God. If you try to create a political ideology out of Christianity, its ideas are radically anti-establishment. That Christianity became associated with maintaining a repressive status quo (often brutally) all the way through history after Constantine is a travesty. It proves that if you mix Christianity with centres of power (be they states or churches), religion tends to be thoroughly misrepresented (scapegoated, typically). Basically, leaders who base their leadership on religion have either set out to misuse religion as a means of repressive enforcement or have been corrupted by a serious conflict of interest along the way. Christianity should not be politicized.
Which brings us to the present day. You can disagree with my theology if you want, but flipping back to Genesis, wasn't the fundamental idea that God gave Adam and Eve freedom, freedom to do wrong and make errors, so that they would love Him for Him, not out of necessity? There were certainly consequences of wrongdoing, but the role of punisher was God's and God's only and fundamentally, humankind was given the freedom to choose (we chose poorly). Isn't it yet another misrepresentation of Christianity to associate it with repression? Not only is personal morality God's business, He has decided that it is wrong to stifle choice because it doesn't inspire true faith.
Of course, Christianity holds that pornography is wrong. But to politicize its message has only ever messed it up.
I'm a political activist for the Greens, Australia's main left wing progressive party.
Family first is a FAR RIGHT party!
Not left!
David
stuff
People often complain that Howard's new conservative brand of the Liberal Party is pulling this country as far right as the americans.
Well, he can't have been doing such a great job if the Family First party popped up. Ignore the submitter's insistance they're left wing - they're far from it. In fact, their main political rival is the Australian Greens, for their support of gay marriage.
The thought of equity in Australian society scares the shit out of these christian extremists. That's probably why they want to censor the internet now - god help us if a 15 year old sees some porn, it's going to unravel the very fabric of our "christian" society!
nah, vote green, preference labor.
stuff
Here's the rest of George Carlin's rant about "protect the children":
Today's kids are way too soft. : : : For one thing, there's too much emphasis on safety and safety equipment: childproof medicine bottles, fireproof pajamas, child restraints, car seats. And helmets! Bicycle, baseball, skateboard, scooter helmets. Kids have to wear helmets now for everything but jerking off. Grown-ups have taken all the fun out of being a kid. : : : What's happened is, these baby boomers, these soft, fruity baby boomers, have raised an entire generation of soft, fruity kids who aren't
even allowed hazardous toys, for Chrissakes! What ever happened to natural selection? Survival of the fittest? The kid who swallows too many marbles doesn't grow up to have kids of his own. Simple stuff. Nature knows best!
Another bunch of ignorant bullshit about your children: school uniforms. Bad theory! The idea that if kids wear uniforms to school, it helps keep order. Hey! Don't these schools do enough damage makin' all these children think
alike? Now they're gonna get 'em to look alike, too? : : : And it's not even a new idea; I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand, because the narration was in German! But the uniforms looked beautiful. And the children did everything they were told and never questioned authority. Gee, I wonder why someone would want to put our children in uniforms. Can't imagine.
And one more item about children: this superstitous nonsense of blaming tobacco companies for kids who smoke. Listem! Kids don't smoke because a camel in sunglasses tells them to. They smoke for the same reasons adults do, because it's an enjoyable activity that relieves anxiety and depression.
And you'd be anxious and depressed too if you had to put up with these pathetic, insecure, yuppie parents who enroll you in college before you've figured out which side of the playpen smells the worst and then fill you with Ritalin to get you in a mood they approve of, and drag you all over town in search of empty, meaningless structure: Little League, Cub Scouts, swimming, soccer, karate, piano, bagpipes, watercolors, witchcraft, glass blowing, and dildo practice. It's absurd. : : : They even have "play dates", for Christ sake! Playing is now done by appointment! But it's true. A lot of these striving, and parents are burning their kids out on structure. I think what every child needs and ought to have every day is two hours of daydreaming. Plain old daydreaming.
Turn off the internet, the CD-ROMS, and the computer games and let them stare at a tree for a couple of hours. Every now and then they actually come up with one of their own ideas.
You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone.
Thanks George!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
"what happens if we get a hung parliment? we don't want a bunch of political deal makers running the show!"
"can you imagine extreme greens running the show? it'd be chaos!"
gee, I dunno which would be worse, people making deals to save the old growth forests in Tasmania, or people making deals to censor freely available information.
'no political dealmakers' indeed!
It shouldn't come as a surprise to slashdot readers ... the two organizations that are down on violent video games (both often mentioned here) are the Lion and the Lamb project (left-leaning outfit) and the National Institute on Media and the Family (right-leaning outfit). Guess which one supports (unconstitutional) legislation limiting sales of violent videogames? I'll give you a hint : it's not the right-leaning one.
Also, the US is probably one of the most right-leaning industrialized nations, and also has the best free speech protections of all of them.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
I couldn't agree more.
....pre-Constantine, as you noted.
...Now that is pro-Life!
There's a strain of Christian thought that through history has emphasized a distinction between Christianity and Religion, per se. Of course, we don't hear this emphasized by the religious Christian groups today as it has generally been championed by those who have resisted the status quo (Of more recent note, cf. Karl Barth and other Neo-orthodox who rallied against old Christian Liberalism that clung to the state and endorsed pretty much anything that came from it, including horrid old doctrines like Eugenics; or cf. the whole Liberation Theology movement in present day Latin America and elsewhere).
It's so ironic that theological conservatives are today the ones who are quickly willing to side with big government and do things like try to legislate rules on marriage to push their own moral world view on others. The earliest Christians, renowned for their anti-establishment conservativism (no Ceasar worship?! Gasp!!) were pacifists in the truest sense.
When the early Christians had a problem with abortion (contemporary forms of the practice), they didn't kill people for it, they waited at the dumps and adopted what children they could.
And now, I sit in Sunday School, and listen to people who honestly believe that if Jesus were here today, he would be writing his senators and politicking on trendy moral issues. It burns me the hell up to have Jesus rendered so trite and tied entirely to local drama. Have they ever even read the damn book they talk about so much?
So, instead of just complaining and throwing in the towel, I now teach Sunday School, and I teach about Jesus and use his words which sound oddly out of place in my Baptist church. It gets me in trouble, and some days I really really want to quit, but also on rare occassions, it turns on lights and people begin to see that there is a difference between Christianity (following Christ) and Religion (the polical, moral, and pop psychology package) and maybe the world is a little better place.
What else would a Geek with a degree in theology do? There's an itch; it needs to be scratched.
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
>It is generally considered that Labor is "left" in Australia whilst the coalition (liberal and national parties) are the "right".
An important point here - the primary party of The Coalition is the Liberal Party, not the liberal party.
The Liberal Party are *not* liberal in the true sense of the word - they are on the conservative end of the political spectrum.
This has lead to Australians referring to "small L liberals" and "big L liberals", to differeiante between the two.
> The family first party is clearly a right wing party and is identified locally as such.
Yep, they're religious zealots of the worst kind. The only parties worse than them are One Nation and the Citizen's Electoral Council.
When dealing with the "evolution is a religiuos belief" idiots, it's important for you not to give them this kind of ground on their sophistic confusion of science and faith. There's an important distinction between religion, which deals with the non-falsifiable, and science, which deals with the falsifiable. Read some Popper.
On the issue of evolution itself: the moment a Creationist asks for another antibiotic because they have a resistant bacterial infection, they are dealing with natural selection in real time. Disbelief in evolution won't save you from its effects.
Family First Party,
I was horrified to read in the news today details of your misguided
policy on instituting a Internet filtering system to block
pornographic and other offensive material on the Internet.
This policy is blatant pandering to lazy parents who wish others to
take the responsibility of properly supervising and raising their
children. I don't deny that pornographic material can be accessed on
the Internet, but having been an active Internet user for many years,
there have been only two occasions where I have accidentally
encountered advertisements for pornographic material. Hardly "easy to
stumble across".
Furthermore, I was flabbergasted at your easy dismissal of the burden
that would be faced by many smaller ISP's and that it doesn't matter
if you drive them out of business, because there "too many of these at
the moment". Never mind that this would negatively impact hundreds or
thousands of families (who I thought you were about putting "first"?).
It could perhaps be argued that Australia has too many political
parties, and that "competition could be maintained" with a lesser
number (like Family First, for example).
You quote figures that 73% of boys and 11% of girls have watched
X-Rated videos, but only 38% and 2% have deliberately sought out sites
on the Internet. So, according to these figures, MORE teenagers have
seen an X-rated video than have sought out Internet pornography.
Surely then your policy should be addressing the alarming numbers of
teenagers viewing these pornographic videos! Or then again, it's
quite possible that teenagers will view pornography any way they can.
You also note that poor uptake of end user filtering. Were there
reasons for this poor uptake? If it's lack of knowledge of the option
then you should perhaps be concentrating on educating the public to
use an existing system.
The policy also states we "acknowledge the need to regulate other
media". Regulation and censorship are two completely different things
- at least with regulation adults can still access legal pornography.
I dislike censorship; because you do not want "the" children to see
pornography does not make it right for you to restrict adults from
this. If parents do not want their children to access pornography,
they can take the appropriate steps. I do not believe it is the right
policy to inflict your censorship on everyone in Australia, whilst
increasing their tax burden (on those poor families again!)
If you are determined to provide an Internet without pornographic and
offensive material, an alternative, cheaper and far more preferable
solution would be for you to either set up, or arrange to set up, your
own ISP. Families would be free to use your ISP, knowing that their
Internet access it is filtered at ISP level, and the rest of us can
use the Internet free of your odious attempts at censorship.
Yours faithfully
Stalin
As with many of these fundaementalist parties in australia the reality is that they wont get very many votes. If they do they are more than likely to be 18-24year olds doing the donkey vote and not realising that its a serious issue. Good thing its compulsory to vote in australia so people are less likely to get into power through donkey votes.