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Censorship in Oz - We need help!
Gimila writes "Despite previous proposed censorship being decided against here in Oz our esteemed leaders (*sarcasm*)have decided to introduce internet censorship legislation to buy one uptight politician's vote on a GST tax - he holds the balance of power and wants to "protect children from the internet", while the government want to intoduce a GST *roll*. 'Net users in Australia need to act now to prevent the proposed legislation - see the EFA Action Alert for more information. The government are ignoring all past and present expert advise including their own studies. We need a backlash down here!
" Yeah, yeah, I know--that's the America Declaration-but it seemed appropriate.
Update: 04/22 06:08 by CT : Hemos needs some more high school: "We the People" is
from the Constitution, not the D.O.I.
This thing about protecting children is the most overused excuse for censorship ever invented. In reality, censorship will never protect children, and frankly politicians don't care. Taking away someone's rights is not protection, it's a direct attack on that person.
No emotional appeal for protecting the innocent among us, should allow political leaders to seize the rights of the people and hold them hostage. This is a problem in America, in Australia, and all over the world. There is never a point where some group of people needs protection so badly that the government should take away the rights of everyone.
The world has always been a dangerous place for those who aren't wary. If a child can access X-rated web sites, that reflects on the child's parents more than on society as a whole. Parents should be the ones who protect their children from perceived threats, not the government, and certainly not the whole of society. The idea of censorship is and should be repugnant to a free society, let us take steps to protect the freedom that we have been given, and prevent its sacrifice for some utopian vision derived from political whim.
Loader of Code and of BricksI couldn't help notice a curious inconsistency here between this story and the Colorado shooting story (which I believe does not belong on Slashdot, but since it is there I will respond).
.001 percent.
Anyway, a number of posters from down under stated in the other thread about what a stroke of genius it was for the Australian government to make it completely illegal for private individuals with no criminal background and no crimnal intent to own a firearm.
Presumably, this was done because the benefits of the vast majority of legal firearm use and ownership (I bet around 99.999%) were deemed not as important as the damages caused by the remaining
Well, Australians, make up your mind. Here in America we have the first two ammendments to the consititution, the first protects the right to free speech, the second protects the right to own firearms. The founding fathers knew that both of these rights will cause some damage, but that also knew that each was far more dangerous in the hands of the government then in the hands of the individual.
Guns and words are both very dangerous. The spoken word has killed far more people then firearms ever will. If guns kill people, then words kill nations.
The founding fathers of the United States got one thing right... Governments are far more dangerous (and as an aside, far more stupid) than individuals. The bill of rights explicitly empowers the individuals at the cost of the government specifically for the purpose of protecting the individual from the government. Both the first AND the second ammendment are critical towards those ends. The first two ammendments protect each other... they simply make Tyranny mathmatically impossible.
So I guess what I am saying is that you should either decide that the government knows whats best and should have strict control and licensing of all dangerous behavior (like free speech and firearm ownership), or you should decide that the individual knows best and minimize governmental controls wherever possible (like limiting free speech restrictions to libel laws and limiting firearm restrictions to preventing felons and psychopaths from possessing firearms).
Make up your mind!
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
I know that no one really wants censorship. And it's pretty absurd in a democratic nation like Australia. BUT ... I've been living in Saudi Arabia for the past year and a half. My Internet Access here is cesored. Basically, I can't view porn. I think some political sites are probably blocked too, but I've never come accross a political site which I was not allowed to view.
... you get the picture. They tried to setup a proxy, but they couldn't figure out how to make it work. In the end, Internet access was taken off the network, and was just put in the library, which is always monitored by someone. So students and teachers could no longer pull up information from the Internet, while in class. The fact of the matter is, the Internet MUST BE REGULATED in certain enviornments. Else, bad things happen. This is such an open and free medium that it has reached a level where entire nations have banned it (for example, Internet was banned in Saudi Arabia until late 1998).
It may not suite some people, but it has its advantages. For one thing, Internet access can be made available anywhere in the country (resteraunts, schools, kindergardens even) without having to worry about people visiting offensive sites, and causing problems for everyone.
The high school I used to goto in Toronto, Canada has full, high speed Internet. This thing started where everytime a lab was left unattended, people would pull up a porno site on all the computers in the lab. When the teachers, or visitors came into the lab
I'm not saying that I promote censorship, nor am I saying that I'm against it. I'm just saying, it has its obviouse advantages.
If Slashdot polls are any indication, most Slashdot users are males in their early to mid twenties. In other words, the prime consumers of porn. You should take any advice they give you regarding censorship with a grain of salt.
Most users here have no idea what it means to raise a child. Here's a small hint - you cannot watch everything that a child does, or police all of their actions. That is why there are general standards on the distribution of adult print materials in every industrialized nation. This notion of parental accountability and responsibility can realistically only go so far. Even the most anal-retentive parents must leave their children to the whims of society for part of the day.
Once most Slashdot users come to have children, they'll realize that their "maybe the parents should get involved" rhetoric is quite unrealistic.