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Australia Chooses Education Over Filtering
riprjak writes "The Australian federal government has rejected a call for Internet filtering to 'protect' Australians from child pornography and has opted instead to undertake an education and information campaign to teach parents about the perils of the Internet."
A government made a sensible, non-kneejerk decision with regard to the Internet?
:)
I want to to move there!
Oh, wait... I already did.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Oi oi oi
[HERO]
i am a soviet space shuttle
The Internet at schooles (or at least the ones I worked at) already had an internet filtration in place which was controlled at a state level. Bear in mind this was Queensland, I wouldn't know about other states.
...the Howard government doing something intelligent?!
::looks outside to see if the sky is falling::
Really, it's laudable that the response by the Aussies is not the cyber-equivalent of smart-bombing (*cough*ChineseEmbassy*cough*Kosovo) but it's still part of the whole growing-pains thing that we'll experience for many years.
I'm not sure any government (save, maybe, South Korea's, which is its current form as a direct result of the internet) realizes just how much the internet is changing the world. Protecting your citizens' bodies is one thing--hunt those child-kidnappers down!--but it's too late for their minds...
and that's a good thing.
only stupid people vote for filtering.
pr0n.au is my next investment.
Unless you consider that kids still have access to the pornography and no amount of "education" is really going to block them or persuade them from accessing it.
It's like those billboards that tell you that "God is Protecting You". It only reaches those who want to be reached.
And remember folks... if you go to warez sites, you're going to get child porn popups from hell.
The article quotes
including a British-style national internet filtering system but rejected it.
I wasn't aware that the UK has a national internet filtering system. Can anyone elaborate?
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Basically the low down is Australia will have really educated children porn stars.
I recently cleaned a friend-of-the-family's PC of a major spy ware infestation, brought on by their 7 yo son going on a porn site, egged on by his mates (as mates do). when the subsequent torrent of pop ups occurred a few days later, he was petrified that the cops were going to come and lock him up, as has happened to all the other people we have been hearing about on the radio/TV/papers.
Although it wont have a lasting effect (IMHO, if pron is there, it will get assessed), but not for a while he will stay away. the poor kid was so terrified, so conscious of what he had done, he will need some serious hormones to get up the courage.
I've got to say, given our (.au) history on matters Internet related, this is very much out-of-character. Refreshing though!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Oi! Oi! Oi!
;)
If you're not Australian, and don't know, then don't even try to understand
Off topic? This is more insightful than anything. Consider what sensible action this government of theirs has taken regarding one of the best tools mankind has ever had for the retrieval and dissemination of information! Yes there are bad things that we don't want our kids to be viewing at an age where they don't comprehend things as we do. Sure violence and certain types of sexual innuendo may be inappropriate for young kids to view because of their inexperience and easily molded minds, where they may become confused and not interpret things correctly as we, their parents, would have taught them correctly.
[HERO] is definitely not off topic. You mods certainly are.
Let the karma burn.
Little Johnny will soon recover from this horrible bout of common sense, and will go back to selling our country out to American corporations.
The government rejected a national filtering system and is instead providing "education". Have they considered requiring filters in schools, public libraries, and government offices (as is being considered in the US)? This kind of system would not have the same drawbacks as a national filter.
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
It's uplifting to see that at least some places in the world are willing to aim for a more intelligent citizenry than simply legislating morality and restricting personal freedoms to for the sake of the idiot majority.
Unpleasantries.
I wrote a metric shit tonne of emails to various people in positions of power about this.
I doubt very much at the end of the day my words directly had much to do with it, but some part of me really hopes it did. If only one minister sat and thought twice about what I'd written to them and it somehow swayed them to the more sensible course of action, I think I can be a little bit prouder of my country.
I'm sure I wasn't the only person making their voices heard over this issue, thanks to everybody else who stood up and let them know what we thought. We've done well this time.
[WHAT]
... I immediately assumed that the benefits of uncensored information had been recognized as a boon to education. Perhaps I was suffering from momentary naivete, but this interpretation still seems to hold much more promise than the other.
I've always believed, even as a child, that the biggest threat to children are their elders.
I know I for one never appreciated being lied to and manipulated, both of which largely define the relationship between the young and old.
One of the questions we commonly hear asked is what advice we would give to someone younger than us, what do we know now that we wished we'd known growing up.
Well my advice for the children of the world is this: Don't believe what people tell you, especially your parents. Keep your own counsel and take everything with a grain of salt. Just because someone loves you don't mean they won't lie to you, and it most definitely doesn't preclude their being crazy, stupid, ignorant, or some combination of all three.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
No no no.
Web filtering might sound good in theory, but in practice too many sites with educational benefit are blocked.
However, web filtering is not just an inconvenience.
There is an alterior motive at work. The state is censoring information that might allow impressionable youths to form opinions that might be critical of the government.
I am a Year 12 student of a high school in NSW. Sites that have been blocked by the proxy that I have noticed include: *.mozilla.org; *.sourceforge.*; *.sf.net; etc, etc. I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before SlashDot is blocked too. However, porn popups often appear thanks to the school using IE and infested Windows 98 machines (Microsoft donates licences to our school, the practice of which ominously reflects Hitler's Jungvolk).
Of course, there are easy ways to get around the blocks, as there is no way you can completely filter the web effectively. It's an inconvenience for me, but someone who isn't a geek will miss out on access to a lot of information.
The stated goal of web filtering is to 'protect' us from viewing "objectionable material" such as dangerous, dangerous porn, but more and more sites are being censored to 'protect' us from websites that aren't directly-related to the short sighted curriculum, e.g. mozilla or sourceforge, and soon we will be 'protected' from material that the state finds objectionable, such as critics of the government. The political blogs will go first because few will notice, then soon the news sites until only Packer's and Murdoch's news sites are endorsed for student viewing by the government.
Completely Darwinian?
I'd think it is much more about religiously beleifs of the early American settlers. Plenty of cultlures, both ancient and modern, have been much more relaxed about portraying sex than the USA. Plenty are still around, so it doesn't seem to be a trait promoting survival/reproduction which would make it Darwinian.
That doesn't mean that adultary or the like is more socially accepted there.
"One can't solve a sociological problem with a technological solution." - Edwards Law
This is not just commonsense, it will also free up for resources for fighting the TRUE dangers to our children here in sunny Oz:
If the dingoes don't get our babies, Steve Irwin will feed them to a crocodile!
Wow...trusting the collective brainpower of an entire society, instead of depending on mechanisms created only by a handful of people who think and act just like the politicians...what a revolutionary idea!}irony off{