AUSTRALIA JOINS CHINA IN CENSORING THE INTERNET BUT OF COURSE IT’S FOR THE PEOPLE’S GOOD
January 1st 2008 01:07
Widely-read international website TechCrunch reported that, “The Australian government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet."
TechCrunch said, “The Labor Party’s policy was announced prior to the Australian election in November and was justified on the basis that the previous government’s policy of providing free copies of NetNanny to all Australian households who wanted it didn’t adequately protect children.”
As recently as the week prior to the election, Labor Party candidates said that the censorship wouldn’t be compulsory, and that the ‘clean feed’ would be opt-in, not opt-out. Monday’s announcement by Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy states that the censorship regime will be mandatory, although people will be able to opt-out of it.
TechCrunch also questioned the meaning of “inappropriate material” that the government referred to, and said, “How far ‘inappropriate material’ may extend was not made clear, for example questioning government policy where it comes to Aboriginal people could be deemed to be discrimination under Australian law and hence blocked by the censorship regime. Worst still, bloggers or those (such as forum owners) who allow users to comment or post could find themselves blocked under this proposal should someone say or post the wrong thing. If there is one certainty in any country that implements broad scale censorship, once they start blocking content it doesn’t stop, and certainly every do-gooder group and special interest lobbyist will be wanting the government to add to the list.”
The theme of Australian modelling itself on Chinese authoritarianism also came through in an ABC news story on Monday afternoon in a quote from Senator Conroy himself.
The ABC reported, “Telecommunications Minister Stephen Conroy says new measures are being put in place to provide greater protection to children from online pornography and violent websites.
“Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.”
The ABC then reported that online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, “but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.”
He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.
"Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road," he said.
"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor government is going to disagree."
MediaBlab comments: Australia’s left often displays fascist tendencies. The more zealous followers of left thinking are quick to assert that their views are inevitably and always demonstrably morally correct and beyond question or debate, and that element often has no compunction of imposing such views on people, by becoming moral police backed by new laws.
It’s ironic that the older generation of Australia’s left, a generation reared in a stultifying conservative climate, was originally driven by movements such as freedom of speech and freedom of censorship, is now sanctimoniously dedicated to imposing its own censorship.
Some of the more bureaucratic elements of Australia’s left movement, particularly elements controlling education for example, are overweeningly politically correct and, if given full rein, would happily impose a style of pc censorship that could become an Orwellian horror.
- From MediaBlab
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