G'day Boanne,
I've decided to reply at length here, because the comments I've read in
SurvPC and elsewhere suggests there's a lot of misinformation out there
about the new Australian Internet censorship laws. And I expect some
of you are wondering _why_ such a strange law was made...
> The rest of the inspiration comes from recent news that Australia
> was/is attempting to make a national (?) law forbidding access to
> pornography for children.
The law has already been passed, despite lobbying by ISPs and others who
know what Net technology involves. I should fill you in on some
background which may help explain _why_ the law got passed:
- Australia has _no_ legal guarantees of freedom of speech. In fact our
High Court explicitly ruled (a few years ago) that our constitution
does not guarantee freedom of speech. The Federal Govt has used this
oversight on occasion for political purposes eg: silencing Vietnam
war protestors and the Communist Party.
- The Internet Censorship Act was passed as part of a complex - and
Machivellian - political deal to appease a couple of Senators in our
Federal Govt. Senators Colston and Harradine belong to none of the local
political parties, and between them they hold the balance of power in our
Senate. Their votes were required if the Govt wanted to pass its
legislation to sell off 1/3 of Telstra (our profitable Govt-owned national
telecommunications company). This sell-off was a centrepiece of the current
Govt's policies.
- Harradine is an elderly God-fearing redneck who's renowned for his
conservative views. Colston is a former union official who is
confused by anything more technologically complex than a biro. Most
other Federal politicians aren't much better on Information Technology;
although Senator Kate Lundy is an outstanding - and self-taught -
exception.
- The mass media in Australia is ultimately controlled by only three
people; all of whom see the Internet as a threat to their
long-established empires. After all, who wants to read the shallow crap
in local papers and TV when you can surf over to CNN or the BBC?
Consequently, the Australian mass media often run stories which highlight the
Internet's dark side. The Melissa virus, for example, received massive
publicity about the peril it posed to "all PCs on the Internet", mainly
because a couple of govt departments were badly hit. So far I've
received five emails containing this virus and my computer is totally
unaffected. So does this mean that I don't have a PC, or that I'm not on
the Internet? ;-)
When the censorship law was passed, there were lots of dimwits
applauding it as a vital step in "stopping filth" etc - ignoring the
broader issues of freedom of speech, the technical impossibilities of
implementation, the existence of programs such as Net Nanny, and the
ease with which the technically literate can flout the law anyway. Even
my children know how to encrypt files. Nasty stuff such as child porn
and terrorism handbooks have been illegal here for many years; and even
the government's own advisors are on record as saying Net censorship is
pointless.
Frankly if a parent is concerned about what their child may see on the
Net, then they should either (a) prevent the child from accessing the
Net at all, or (b) share the experience with them. I know my boys
often find things online that they don't understand and need explained.
And I note that Australian newsagents have not been forced to hide all
their girlie magazines from the children. At my local newsagent you
actually have to walk past all the tits to reach the computer and
astronomy magazines.
I regard the thinking behind this law as part of that encroaching
social disease known as "abdication of responsibility" - the philosophy
that anything bad which happens to you (or your family) is always
somebody else's fault, and that they should be forced to compensate you.
If you choose to breed then you choose to accept all the consequences -
which includes guiding your children for a couple of decades until they
become independent adults.
My own website contains numerous instances of the word "naked" which is
already generating complaints from word-counting obsessives. Go and
have a look at my site to see what they're upset about (and yes you can
show it to children).
And, ironically, the Net blocking technology favoured by Colston and
Harradine also includes such words as "job" and "toys"!
</soapbox>
cheers,
Fraser Farrell
http://www.dove.net.au/~fraserf/
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