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New Zealand Introduces Internet Filtering
Thomas Beagle writes "The New Zealand government has been stealthily introducing a centralised internet child-pornography specific filtering system. Voluntary for ISPs but not for their users, ISPs representing over 94% of the market are already intending to join. Read the general FAQ and technical FAQ about the proposed Netclean Whitebox implementation."
Where would your government be without childporn? If it didn't exist, the government would surely invent it.
Why normal people support laws like this.
They hear the word child pornography. Then they stop thinking. And if you question the sense, you are a pedophile, or support them.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
As hard as it is to accept censorship, at the same time, do you really want to make a stand over child porn? It's a rough spot, because it does open the door to more censorship, and if it isn't stopped now it won't ever be able to be stopped, but at the same time this is a really sneaky way of doing it because of the subject mater and the general publics view on it.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Filtering of CP leads to filtering of obscenity, leads to filtering of "objectionable content," leads to filtering of government dissent, leads to another Great Firewall of China. So while I'm all for having child porn off of my internet, I don't particularly like how it could snowball.
Post-Iran, governments see that controlling the Internet is vital to controlling their population.
ISPs can declare 3rd-party VOIP and other heavy-usage models as violating the filtering rules (whether that makes sense or not) and kick them off the network.
Large businesses prefer that customers be reached through communication channels they control and understand. (TV, radio, print.)
Governments, ISPs, and businesses support it. Nobody important opposes it. (You are not important.) Why are we surprised that it is happening?
Mod me flamebait all you want, but the fact is it's TRUE. Americans are so blinded and oblivious to the better conditions outside their own country elsewhere, even as far close as their own northern border.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Nothing the NSA and CIA feel like telling you, anyway..
This sig may contain nuts.
How about spending the resources on busting pedophiles and exposing pedophile rings instead? Or was that too straightforward and precise?
That would involve time, money and intelligence. Something that governments, by definition, are always in short supply of. Politicians ALWAYS take the easy way and most Press friendly route. They will do what looks good now, even if they know it will be a failure later. Hopefully during the next administration.
How about spending the resources on busting pedophiles and exposing pedophile rings instead? Or was that too straightforward and precise?
But that might drop the arrest numbers down considerably, which means cutting funding, which means less sweet desk jobs for law enforcement officials.
Think about it. You can bust a guy who is molesting a child and taking photos of it, and that's one arrest. But if you bust all the people who download, trade, or look at those photos, you can potentially makes thousands of arrests! That's thousands of arrests based off of one sexual abuse incident. Best of all, you can keep arresting people who look at those photos for many years into the future. It's the gift that keeps on giving!
No, it's best that these photos and videos continue to be produced. At least until everyone finally agrees to make stories and drawings just as illegal.
Likewise, if MADD, PETA, and anti-smoking groups actually achieved their goals, they would be destitute, along with all of their employees. They'd also have nothing to use as propaganda. Maybe that's why PETA only actually adopted out 16 animals out of its "no kill" slaughter houses last year. They depend on the very thing they claim to want to stop. If that thing stops, no one will fund them. However, if the thing they're 'fighting against' is promoted and increased, so is their funding. Funny how that all works.
It's not just that it shuts down the rational part of their brain, but they wind up expecting someone *else* to do the protecting. Because, you know, being a parent yourself is too tough.
I happen to be a father to two little boys (age 5 and 2) and I'll agree that being a parent is tough work. It's not all hugs and smiles with kids. There are temper tantrums. They *WILL* test boundaries to see how far they can go. Repeatedly. They *will* try to get away with things they shouldn't be doing. Keeping up with what is happening and keeping your kids in line (e.g. "No yelling in the store") and safe (e.g. "No running away from Mommy and Daddy in the parking lot") isn't always easy. Too many parents just let their kids run rampant because they don't want to exert the effort to set and enforce boundaries. Many people seem to want someone else to do the work for them. So they whine for the government to step in and "child proof" life. The problem is, you can't child proof life. Life has a lot of sharp edges to it. The trick is to teach your child to avoid the sharp edges *and* what to do if they accidentally hit upon one of them. That takes work and effort that too many parents just seem to not want to invest.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It is well documented that incidence of rape, and violence in general, dropped dramatically with the popularization of porn.
Let's assume the filter does its job (which most of us agree is unlikely). Has anyone considered that reducing access to child porn may actually increase the incidence of child rape?
Maybe the sex drive works differently in these people, but if it doesn't, is it not reasonable to assume there is a significant risk associated with removing their "outlet?"
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
For me 5 weeks (or more) of paid vacation per year is better than 2. Or having more than 2 weeks warning before you are fired also counts as something. Or having a minimum wage that you can actually live on, or not having gun-ridden ghettos in every large city.
I like the quality of life in the Netherlands way better than that in the US, and I've spent about a year of my life in the US.