The current attitude by the Australian government about the Internet filter is a worry. A self righteous disdain for anybody else’s opinion. Or the collateral damage that they will cause.
Reminds me of the Lieutenant Colonel from Apocalypse Now, who took joy in the deployment of napalm with no regard for the collateral damage.
In the current debate Rudd and Conroy seem to just keep churning out the same statements about the internet filters, despite what anybody says. Childish really.
And on the 8th day God created the Internet Filter.
Commanding ‘Thou shall have no other Internet before me’.
Stephen Conroy has delivered his Christmas present early, ISP level Internet filter. Tuesday afternoon the government announced that was giving the green light to its controversial censorship plan. And Conroy stated that we can look forward to legislation being introduced next year, ahead of the election.
Yesterday news sites, blogs and twitter erupted in a furore over the plans. Below are some articles on the subject I though were interesting:
Australian politician Stephen Conroy has begun distancing himself from his highly controversial internet censorship policy. Although this is not a complete backdown. There still the intention to implement a list of filtered sites, just changing what is deemed to be filtered.
Parents are worried about their children looking at the Australian Prime Minister’s or Oppositions Leader’s web site, when they should be finding out about pop stars. Worried about the bad influence this could have, their children growing up to be politicians themselves. – A funny parody of the current Internet filtering debate.
Support for the Govt’s plan to censor the internet has hit rock bottom, with even some children’s welfare groups now saying that that the mandatory filters, aimed squarely at protecting kids, are ineffective and a waste of money. The filters, which will block “illegal” content for all Australian internet users and “inappropriate” adult content on a
Federal Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy is trying to implement mandatory filtering of the internet amid public outcry. Online “activists” at Getup have organised a campaign that has received over 22,000 signatures in just one day, in an attempt to put a stop to it.
For those that can’t read all the text on the movie poster:
presented by
OFFICE OF FILM AND LITERATURE CLASSIFICATIONStephen Conroy as Guy Montag
Fahrenheit 451
2009?
staring STEPHEN CONROY and STEVE FIELDING director AUSTRALIAN COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA AUTHORITY producers APATHY, CONFUSION and KNEE-JERK REACTION executive producer AUSTRALIAN TAXPAYERS distributor NATIONAL BROADBAND NETWORK
R18+ May not be available on the Internet in Australia
So, how did I come to make the image?
I went looking for information about lists of banner books in Australia. One of the points stressed about the censorship regime of the previous government (but not that of the new one) is that while the list of banned books is available (or you can test for them), but the list of banned sites is not.
It was interesting to see that ‘Fahrenheit 451′ was amongst the lists I found, because of coarse language used. Which sparked the above poster.
The current government is trying to impose a blank filter on all Australians. This is despite the reports received about the effect on network speed, and the unreliability of filters.
Perhaps the movie should be called Centigrade 435 after the temperature at which network cables ignite?
(Network cables have a PVC covering, which has an ignition temperature of 435C)
Commentary about censorship in Australia:
Some interesting sites about book banning:
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