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US-Australia Tensions Rise Over Net Filter
daria42 writes "Tensions between the US Government and its counterpart in Australia appear to be rising over Australia's proposal to filter the internet for objectionable content. The US government has raised its concerns over what it sees as potential censorship directly with the Australian Government. However, last night, Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy denied he had had any approach from US State Department officials."
Against all my instincts, I find myself for the right of governments to filter, as long as they are 'legitimate' governments.
That is, the 'people' can hear the arguments and throw them out, if they don't want the filtering.
Optimally, the production models would change so that no-one produced trash and education levels so that no-one consumed it. I'm mainly talking about TV which is a push medium and which may be dying anyway.
I'm 60 this year and I have seen a step by step decline sold as 'freedom' and 'free trade', code words for 'we're making a lot of money with this' don't take away that 'right'.
But you're quite correct to criticise, I don't have anything like a complete answer and it pains me to end up on the 'wrong' side.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
within a community, so Australian's would be right to be very disappointed to see our friends in the US campaigning against our right to regulate. The bottom line is that the greatest threat to freedom on the Internet at present is the dominance of selfish US corporations. So unless the US government is prepared to tackle the dominance of these large companies in a significant manner such as splitting them to have no more than a 5% market share then please do not lecture Australia on freedom.
Seriously, pull your head out of your arse, mate. This is about a developed, democratic country trying to blind its people even more than it already does by pushing its conservative, Christian views on its secular population. And, as usual, damaging the lifestyle of the majority of its citizens because no one in power here can grow some balls and find a way to actually punish criminals instead of hiding them away in hotels (prisons) that cost tax payers countless dollars every year and achieve nothing. Now you might not care personally, but these are issues that are relevant all over the world - Australia is just unlucky enough to be the example. So you don't live here? I don't give a fuck where you live. Go read some other site if you don't like it. It's not your Slashdot. We are members of this community and WE care, as do many community members who have never been to Australia. It is our rights and our future on the line - not just a collection of news stories.
/trollfeeding :(
I would personally like to thanks the Slashdot editors for continuing to run these stories. I get quite a bit of my info on this topic from here and I live in Australia. I'm 20 years old and I have never set foot outside this country, but if this plan goes ahead I will seriously consider leaving for good. I do not want to leave my home. So thank you, Slashdot, for continuing to promote awareness of our situation.
Despite any posturing, It's their fucking wet dream to be able to do it here too.
I don't want censorship at all. But I think it's hilarious that America, which is so censored that it can't even show boobies on television (nipples, specifically), is telling Australia that it shouldn't be censoring things.
There was an article posted only a couple of days ago that essentially said censorship is harmful to democracy. Maybe both the US and Australian governments should get out of censorship altogether, lest they wind up like China.