Aussie Internet Censorship Minister Censors Self

An anonymous reader writes "Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the minister attempting to ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat, has been removing all traces of the unpopular legislation from his main website with a JavaScript filter. From the article: 'It was revealed today a script within the minister's homepage deliberately removes references to internet filtering from the list. In the function that creates the list, or "tag cloud," there is a condition that if the words "ISP filtering" appear they should be skipped and not displayed.' Bear in mind, this is the same minister that tried to get the ISP of tech forum Whirlpool to pull the site after users there posted a response email from the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority)."

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[grimdawg]

Does anyone else find the tone of this article, and the tone used by similar stories about Conroy, to be childish and overall harmful to any kind of legitimate debate or possibility of changing the minds of the people in charge?

Saying he wants to "ram the great firewall of Oz down everyone's throat" makes you sound like a childish politician yourself, making every point in as dramatic a tone as possible, one step away from begging him to 'think of the children'. It almost makes me feel sympathy for the guy, who surely can't like what he reads when he makes a vanity google search.

It seems that 'geeks', 'gamers' and 'youths' generally can't seem to understand that when you complain rudely, the powers-that-be aren't going to listen. If you behave in a way that they see as childish, they will continue to treat you like children. That's why constantly defending games as 'not harmful' (instead of the more measured response, 'surely not any more harmful than movies, etc') is not useful. That's why Jack Thompson stayed around for so long. It's why Conroy's determination continues to get stronger, and why the SA Attorney-General isn't going to approve an R-rating anytime soon.

USE YOUR NOGGINS, INTERNET