Danu Poyner makes some pertinent points on how to win the political battle in sway against compulsory censorship of the net.
Since ‘protection of the children’ as a convenient justification for censorship has such a contemporary, seductive ring, people need education and persuasion so they can clearly see the Government’s plans are inherently flawed, that
- there is existing net filtering software available free for parents if they wish to install it on their computers which works as well as the Government’s proposed mandatory ISP based net censorship filters
- placing the computer in the family living room is an effective means for supervising children’s internet usage
- the proposed Government filters will slow our already tortoise speed, uncompetitive internet considerably
- our international economic competitiveness will suffer at the worst of economic times
- compulsory net censorship will not prevent peer to peer and encrypted file exchanges which make up the majority of traffic
- it is highly likely that people’s ISP costs will rise to cover expenses incurred in installing and monitoring the unworkable filters
- compulsory filtering will be easily circumvented by anyone wishing to do so by proxying – children’s activities will be driven underground
- there are no guarantees that innocent sites will not be blocked or pernicious sites will be permitted regardless of compulsory net filtering
- as an unworkable pseudo-solution it will waste $125.8 million of OUR taxes, and
- the repulsive trajectory toward Australia becoming a nanny state where parents’ roles are usurped by the state will be accelerated.
Finally the terms of the debate need alteration – as we’ve already indicated here, the government terminology of ‘clean feed’ needs to be replaced with the disturbing epithet it is – net censorship. Let’s call a spade a spade, before we lose that privilege too.
Protests against the Government’s proposed compulsory internet censorship are planned for Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne on December 13.
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