Internet Censorship

[2_islands]

Good work Reoh; article and on going involvement in the forums as points are raised.
(+1 blue to you Reoh when it lets me.)

In contrast to Chaplain, I do not agree with Government based filtering. I concur with those that believe that filtering should be left to the computer users eg. Library, School, Parent etc... but even that filtering should be monitored and kept as less restrictive as possible eg. restrict child porn but not political or religious discussion.

This approach would justifiable in accordance with Human Rights principles. Considering Australia doesn't have a Bill of Rights, sadly we do not get much protection to prevent or moderate government intrusions into our lives.

As we have had threads re: morals / ethics or good / bad in the "world around us" I will briefly state in response to Chaplain without wishing to distract from OP: discussion re: morals is subjective. For example: I believe some have slipped eg. we don't punish child offenders but others have risen eg. I don't whip my kids for raising or discussing sex.

[Squiz]

Well done Reoh, great article you should proud !!

cheers

squiz

[Dr8k]

Originally Posted by CHaPLaiN

Well I think it is better to try than not try at all. There is way too much internet access which is harmful to children and too many parents that don't even care.

I see the result of alot of this kind of stuff in my previous role as a Comp Technician in a school and also my current role as a pastor. Porn addiction has a devastating effect in marriages, relationships, youth (mostly boys) and young kids. We now have young kids being involved in sexual abuse cases, and they are learning stuff way too early. Let them be kid's for goodness sake.

The moral values have greatly declined over the last two decades, and it is annoying now that you cannot even buy a mainstream FPS game without the 'F' word. Please don't label me as an old fashioned, fundamentalist. I just remember a slightly better childhood, which didn't allow me to see adults engaged in oral sex every day.

Hey Chaplain,

The core of this debate isn't whether something should be done to help protect kids. The core of this issue is that the measures proposed a) don't protect kids effectively; and b) seriously infringe free speech and privacy. Something that was reported in a Hack broadcast on triple j (sorry, I don't have a better reference) is that the blacklist the government wants to use already exists. However, it is classified. Sometime last year (or the year before) the EFA tried to use a freedom of information case to get a copy of the list so they could confirm what sites are being banned. Before the case made it through court the government introduced new legislation to protect the list from FoA cases. This means they could put ANYTHING on this blacklist and we would never know. The world was in an uproar during the Beijing Olympic Games because a few journalists had restricted internet access for a couple of weeks - why aren't they angry about this?

[Orbac]

Dr8k , it is being talked about and that is good. I think that most free people really can't believe that a "Free" Nation would and / or could do this to its people, in the name of "Saving the Children".

[mava]

Excellent writeup... I agree as well - it is good that this is being talked about. I also agree that the Government should not impose this kind of blanket censorship in a "free country" - especially given that there are cheaper, more effective, more fair solutions. Take OpenDNS for example... It is a free service that can be used on an individual machine or router basis to filter out most content that is inappropriate to children (users can chose which types of content are filtered). The Australian Government could either leverage OpenDNS or invest in something similar and 1) enforce it on schools, and 2) promote it just as an option for individuals rather than imposing it as a law for everyone.

As a father of two young children, I currently prefer to filter content on my network. And I believe that is what freedom is about: enabling preferences not a imposing restrictions.

[Marakai]

Would like to add my appreciation for this fantastic article!

I also agree with those who encourage you to see if it is possible to gain some media exposure for it - it is by magnitudes better than most of what has been written, barring a few such as Mark Newton's commentary in The Advertiser. (He is with Internode and has the "honour" of having been personally named and attacked verbally by Conroy for his stance)

[Demomic]

Thank you, Reoh, for posting this article.

Government involvement in determining what is appropriate or inappropriate on the internet is surely usurpation of our choices as private citizens and free individuals. There are already control systems in place in the commercial arena for those who chose to use them. Protecting children from accessing whatever content they deem unsuitable is the responsibility of parents, not the government. With access to data on what websites an individual access or tries to access, what government will not collect that data and find some way to use it or abuse it? Do you trust any government with that kind of blanket information? Do you want to relinquish your privacy to a government who will collect and interpret your use of the internet? And, more important, to whom will you give the power to decide what is "appropriate"? After you have given them that power, how do you propose to limit their decisions to "questionable" content?

I have a particular interest in this subject as an adjunct teacher of gifted middle school children. I develop and teach my own classes as part of a program to engage gifted students in subjects more deeply and in greater variety. A brief survey of my research topics might help to highlight a problem with this type of governmental control. For a class in public health called "Plague, Pox, and Pestilence", I did research on how disease has affected history, and the use of disease as a weapon, in both ancient and modern times. In developing a class on "War and Virtual War: Ender's Game", I collected information on the use of deception as a practice in war, on China's one child policy, on the training of children as soldiers, on the use of propaganda as a means of influencing public policy. For a class on The Brain: Teaching and Training, some of the reasearch led to discovering issues of abuse in human experimentation, methods of both military and social indoctrination, the effects of drugs and other ways of altering perception.

Now, as I am an adjunct teacher, one not directly employed by a specific school but hired as a kind of consultant or contractor, if government were given a blanket license to collect data on my website use, do you not think they might find my choice of subjects, out of any kind of context, alarming?

That is the sort of issue that censorship of this type would entail. It would have a chilling effect on research for completely innocent and worthy purposes. What teacher would not feel the government looking over their shoulder in that kind of enviornment? Some subjects would be hard to teach, others would be impossible. How could you teach the human body and not discuss sexuality, even in just the purely physical, functional aspect of it? Are students to be deprived of information necessary to relate what they learn in school to the real, present-day world they have to live in? Would you rather they had good information and good tools for making responsible decisions, or a "Big Brother" government that makes those decisions, not only for students, but for all the rest of us as well?

Sources show a program like this would be ineffective against countermeasures people would take to access forbidden content, costly in the escalation of the race between control and the sidestepping of those controls, and a deep invasion of privacy subject to the most dangerous and egregious abuses that can be imagined. It is hard to countenance that any reasonable people of a free society could not see and understand that giving up that much control of privacy and information to any government, for a largely ineffective and costly solution to a problem best controlled by the indivual, is an exercise in futility.

Demomic

[Dr8k]

Wow. Thank you for your input Demonic. You have provided an excellent example of the dangers that await all of us if governments continue down this road and I appreciate the clarity and conviction of your message.

[King_Rocket]

Text taken form a Boing Boing post.

"Ed James sez, "A News.com.au article describing how a vocal critic of the Australian Government's plan ISP-level internet filtering was threatened by telephone and warned to stay silent. For me and all right-minded Australian, this is a new low in this absurdist plot. We are so busy laughing at George Bush's America, we didn't notice we are fast becoming the laughing stock of the free world."

I guess if you're the kind of person willing to suppress the intellectual liberty of an entire nation in a half-baked scheme to fight the child-porn bogeyman, it's not a huge stretch to suppressing the intellectual liberty of your opponents with intimidation."

Link to the original News.com.au story.

[Dr8k]

Wow. That's crazy. I've written to the senator - please everybody do the same! Lets stop this madness whilst we can