No books for you!!!
So Australia is now planning on joining China by having a national internet filter. That sounds like a good group to join. Hey you know what our country needs? to be more like china. Another outrageous stab for power by the government. When you give the federal government power over knowledge and information, you give them power over everything. According to this article, originally the point of the filter was just to block child pornography. Okay, i'm willing to accept that. I'm not sure that i agree it should exist, but i'm willing to accept it. But then the article goes on to say it could be extended to block sites about euthanasia and anorexia, and that there will be no way to opt out of this filter, the entire nation will be blocked out. Why right does the federal government have to silence debate about euthanasia. I don't know what the laws around euthansia are in Australia, but whatever the current laws are, i would think it would be a legitimate topic of conversation. And as far as i'm aware, anorexia is not illegal. I have always been against excesively thin women, mostly because i think they are ugly. Also i'm afraid of breaking them. But i don't think anorexia is any worse either morally or healthwise than extreme obesity. What right does the federal government have to block discussion of a subject that is not even a legal matter, but a health matter. And the biggest concern, this is just the start, where will it continue. Even if someone enjoys blocking these sites, what sites are next. This won't be the end, governments never just stop expanding their power.
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives-Heinlein
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24568137-2862,00.html
P.S. for Rachel, the one australian reader that i know about, if sometime you can't access this blog, your government has blocked it out. I do discuss euthanasia occasionally, anorexia not so much.
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives-Heinlein
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24568137-2862,00.html
P.S. for Rachel, the one australian reader that i know about, if sometime you can't access this blog, your government has blocked it out. I do discuss euthanasia occasionally, anorexia not so much.
posted by Trashcan at 10/31/2008 02:04:00 AM
5 Comments:
Ahhh yes, Rudd's wonderful Internet filter. I think the absurdity of this is at first they proposed spending multi millions of taxpayers dollars on a system from which people could opt out and then everyone got annoyed at them about wasting taxpayers money, so it is it looks like they have jerked the knee and decided against the opt out option. What's wrong with parents monitoring their children's Internet usage? Another taste of Rudd's socialist genius that sounds good to some people, costs millions of dollars to implement and won't even really work properly because if someone wants to get to child porn or anorexia or euthanasia web sites they will find a way. The thing that scares me is that in the Senate here in Australia party's vote in blocks, conscience votes are rare, so if the current government decide to pass this law they will most likely be successful (as I understand it the balance of power in the Senate belongs to the Family First party, an extremely Christian based party, and I can see them giving their vote to this law).
Bloody typical of this government to take away the opt out option because people accused it of being a waste of money. Well, I guess anorexia and euthanasia support sites will be out as well. Also, considering I do heaps of research about Nazi policies including eugenics and euthanasia I wonder how my research for my job at the Holocaust Centre will be affected?
Oh, and this is pretty much just an election thing to get the Christian vote. Our previous Prime Minister John Howard proposed something very similar before he lost the election last year
Sex on teh internets. Oh noes!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/howard-pitch-for-family-vote-with-internet-filter/2007/08/10/1186530542829.html
It didn't work then (This one is a MUST read)
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-2,00.html
And it won't work now
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080111-Why-government-internet-filtering-wont-work.html
Fucking socialists.
if they want the youth to not get anything bad from the internet, they should just ban images. nobody's gonna actually read the damn thing. think how annoying it would be to download porn with no preview image. no kid would do that. then you can still have all the helpful information without any of the pictures that...glorify anorexia? what?
anyway, rachel, say goodbye to YouTube. that'll be one of the first sites to go.
Fuckin a I never thought of that. Fucking Christian vote grabbing nanny staters. But then again, Howard's porn filter didn't work either.
I just can't see this working, it's like the old saying that a fence only keeps an honest criminal out. This really isn't going to work and I cringe to think of the amount of taxpayers money that is going to be wasted in the meantime.
PS I sent you and Lokys another article on this matter.
If the goal is to have a filter parents can use to keep their children from accessing innapropriate material, then i'm willing to accept that, but it ought to be done by a private company. If there are really enough concerned parents, to warrant such a thing, then a private company ought to create it and sell it. The goal of prevent adults from accessing information is what i find truly dispicable. And top of which, once you give the government to power to regulate any information, i would be concerned about them expanding their powers.
I suppose it's good that the government is such a bumbling clod that it couldn't ever effictively block information, and is just pissing money away, but as long as they are just going to piss money away, they may as well give it to me.
i wrote a comment here, but decided to post it to my own blog instead. it was completely irrelevant, utterly. it wasn't about australia, or government control, or pissing anything away.
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