Loss of Privacy

Though most people who understand how the internet works knew this was a large waste of money, only now are child group organizations in Australia coming around to the fact that net censors don’t work.

The common internet users, as well as politicians, such as Conroy, believe that the internet is like television.  If you don’t want something to be seen, you simply block the content.  Many people believe that this will help to censor what children can see and hear.  Unfortunately, you can’t just flip a switch and eliminate what is on the internet.

In a joint statement with lobby group GetUp, both Save the Children Australia and the National Children’s & Youth Law Centre believe the resources could be better spent on law enforcement agencies battling to eradicate child pornography on the internet.

GetUp national director Simon Sheikh said the mandatory filter won’t work on most of the content it is intended to block, and that would be money down the drain…Mr Sheikh estimates the sum could fund 300 extra police officers to fight online child pornography.

If they had thought of this before implementing the idiotic censorship laws, they could have been fighting child porn for the past two years.

“The tens of millions of dollars that such a scheme will cost should instead be diverted to appropriate child protection authorities and police to prevent the abuse of children,” Mr McDougall said.

“It should go towards effective community-based education strategies that give children and parents the skills to protect themselves.”

“Educating children about safe internet use is a more effective and sustainable way of protecting them from cyber crime than the proposed internet filter,” Ms Petit said.

“Teaching children how to recognise and steer clear of inappropriate online content is a more proactive and powerful way to shield them from internet crime.”

Hey, what a great idea.  It’s not like the people against censorship haven’t been telling you this for years.  You must have come up with this all by yourself.

Is is possible that, somewhere in the world, politicians actually listen to people with the knowledge of a particular technology so we don’t waste craploads of money on idiot laws and stupid trial periods?  Massive, government censorship programs should always be denounced and protests should arise whenever a government attempts to institute one.  Never let, “It’s for the children,” be used as an excuse to curb your rights.

What was once left for the domain of the conspiracy theorists is now mainstream.  Everyone said it would never happen, yet, Australia is now set to ban all adult online games.

According to a spokesman for Censorship Minister StephenConroy, under the filtering plan downloadable games, flash-based web games, and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard will be banned.   Because Australia does not have an R, 18+ or similar rating for computer games, all adult games will automatically be classified as RC (Refused Classification).

If you have the guts to post one of the hyperlinks on Australia’s banned list, the Australian communications regulator says they will fine you AU$11,000.  Wikileaks, whom the Australian communications regulator hates so much, has several pages of their site listed due to Australia being unhappy with them for posting Denmark’s banned sites list.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA – an anti-abortion website.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government’s censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

“The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship,” Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

The site has also published Thailand’s internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions.

Here again, we have sites being added to the blacklists that should not be and the public isn’t supposed to know what sites are blacklisted.  It is commonly known that this type of censorship is begun by claiming to be “saving the children,” but it quickly descends to stifle free speech and anything else a government doesn’t want its people to talk of or be informed about.   Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has already stated, on the record, that he hopes the porn industry will go broke as a result of the blacklist.  This entire scheme is politically motivated and has little to do with actually protecting the citizens of Australia.

Australia, like many other countries, already have laws to combat child pornography and anything else that is illegal online.  There is no need to have this blacklist to being with.  Child porn is not so rampant that children are being bombarded with it everywhere they turn when they are online.  Child porn and illegal activities online are something that people, including children, have to seek out.  It doesn’t come knocking at your door.

Conservative MP Fred Nile wants a ban on going topless at all Australian beaches so as to not offend any Muslims or Asians.

“Our beaches should be a place where no one is offended, whether it’s their religious or cultural views,” he said.

“I don’t want to have any provocations or disturbances on our public beaches,” he said.

If you plan on not offending anyone, then you’d better just close the beaches now and force everyone to stay home.  Everything anyone does at the beach could possibly offend someone else, so it’s just safer to close them than offend anyone.

“Once being topless is accepted as lawful the next question will be why can’t women go totally nude on a public beach and I don’t think Australians want to go down that pathway.”

Yes, because every other country in the world has gone crazy and has nude beaches all over the place.  Except they don’t.  There are designated nude beaches in other countries.  Mr. Nile is just going overboard on the PC bus.

Waverley Council Mayor Sally Betts says she is aghast at moves by state politicians to outlaw women from sunbathing topless on NSW beaches.

“We’ve got alcohol-related violence, we’ve got under-age drinking and anti-social behaviour in the public domain – those are really important issues,” Ms Betts told Fairfax Radio Network.

Indeed!  A few breasts are not going to hurt anyone, but other, more violent behavior is something that should be considered first.  Here’s an idea.  If you don’t want to see women topless, don’t go to topless beaches.  The fact that a fundamentalist Christian pastor is raising the issue and not Muslims or Asians should explain it all.