Internet Censorship

Jo, from Stop…Have a Chat wrote an article about Internet Censorship, and this is something that has been on my mind for a while, so I thought that I’d add my two penny’orth to the discussion.

There are numerous discussions on the internet about ways to sidestep the internet censorship legislation, should it be passed, and there are many proxy servers that the paedophiles and people wanting to see the banned sites will use. Does the government honestly think that the censorship laws will really solve anything? Will it be the case of people seeing that something is blacklisted, and wanting to see it because it is forbidden fruit?

Parental responsibility should be the first and only step in internet censorship. Schools have NetNanny installed on their computers, but this doesn’t stop children from visiting the banned sites – rather it excites their imagination and their curiosity, so that they actually want to go to the places that are banned. To sidestep it, all that the students do is to type the internet address in a different language.

Parents could help by:

• Having computers in areas where internet access can be monitored.
• Discussing inappropriate content with their children and helping their children to be able to avoid those sites.
• Setting up your search engine settings so that internet search engines don’t display inappropriate content – this can be used for both text and images.

Australia is supposed to be a Democracy, but what the government seeks to do is nothing short of Communism.  Telling people what they can and can’t see is Communism in action. Mind you, these sites are not sites that I would visit anyway, but my point is that this censorship is only the start. Yes, I would love nothing better to have these paedophile rings and explicit s*xual content removed from the internet, but these people will find ways around any censorship filter that is added. Target the individuals, not the internet! 

Some Questions to Ponder:~

What do you think about internet censorship?

Will it really achieve anything?

Will it stop with this round of internet censorship, or will the powers that be decide that religion will be the next thing to be blanketed, or maybe it will be the photos of Jesus on the Cross that will be deemed too provocative?

Did you realise that some sites will have blanket bans because their sites have been hacked?

Mr Rudd has promised Australians high speed Broadband, but if these censorship laws go ahead, this is likely to be only a pipe dream for most people.

Maybe it will be your site that will be blanketed, and believe me, once it’s in place, you’ll never get the ban lifted. Please don’t sit blindly by, and think that this topic is going to go away, for it won’t. If you don’t have your say, you will have no one to blame but yourself when and if these changes come into effect.

Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome

Everything seems to be working fine with Google Chrome, but not in Mozilla Firefox (should that be Fired Fox???)