Slashdot Mirror
Ireland May Be Next To Censor the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Irish Times, the government of Ireland — the country that recently made blasphemy a criminal offense — has had extensive talks regarding the censorship of the Internet. Details are a little sketchy, as the documents requested under the Freedom of Information request were denied; however, '...the ongoing high level of discussion on the subject is indicated in the detailed description of each refused item in the list of materials returned by the [Department of Justice].' Ireland seems to be following the well-trodden path blazed by the Land Down Under, justifying censorship with 'won't somebody think of the children!' (and the copyright holders)."
I live in Ireland. Let's be clear here that the Irish people (hereafter referred to as 'D'Oirish') themselves are to blame. Internet access in Irish public libraries is already heavily censored yet if you point this out to an Irish person, they think you're making a fuss about nothing.
Ireland does not have the same level of security paranoia existing in other countries, where you can get beaten up or shot at by the police just for having a noisy demonstration where a politician might hear it. But in Ireland, D'Oirish never call their government and associated lackeys to heel and enforce anti-corruption laws. Political AGMs in Ireland are an exercise in group love, nothing else. The culture here is to never to cause trouble or speak out against the status quo.
I think this is one reason why D'Oirish are so technologically backward (seriously, go into a supermarket and see if one person in ten knows the difference between a kilobyte and a gigabyte. You might as well ask them which is heavier.), D'Oirish are essentially infantile (nothing solves a problem in Ireland like cracking a joke about it, then doing nothing.) and D'Oirish keep voting in the same power-elite every election, for the sake of spurious quickly forgotten local issues.
Everytime something goes wrong here, D'Oirish moan and whine and do nothing about it except hope it'll go away. No paedophile priest had to go into hiding for fear of his personal safety (fear of getting his face in a paper, maybe), nor banker nor corrupt politician, polluting industrialist or crooked developer. The only culture in Ireland is the culture of business. The government here (and that firmly includes the faux 'green' party) truly believe there is nothing that can't be run as a business model. When they figure out a way to monetise fresh air, will D'Oirish finally do something?
Lastly, doesn't anyone realise that there is already a form of net censorship in Ireland? It's the appalling internet services that make downloading anything larger than 100Mb an exercise in anger management.