Posted on by Stilgherrian

Two more articles on Internet Censorship

Crikey logo

Two more articles from me about Internet censorship today. And it’s only Monday. I wonder what the rest of the week will produce?

  1. Google Takes a Slash and the world ends in Crikey, which riffs off the weekend’s glitch at Google and yesterday’s Internet outage in Melbourne and concludes that a glitch in ISP-level filters could cause massive problems.
  2. Christian Lobby: The New Lions Of Clean Feed in New Matilda, which looks at the dodgy arguments being deployed by the latest pro-censorship warrior, Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby.

Hey New Matilda, I know I haven’t included your logo, just Crikey‘s. But I couldn’t be arsed doing pixel-pushing just now. You’ll cope.

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7 Replies to “Two more articles on Internet Censorship”

  1. It’s amusing, isn’t it, that if you’re against the ‘Clean Feed’ then you are, ipso facto, a pedophile. Or worse, in some people’s eyes: a Communist.

  2. @anaglyph: Indeed. The fact that thay’re continually attacking the people with a bit of old-fashioned name-calling instead of addressing the arguments clearly demonstrates the weakness of their position.

    Since writing the New Matilda piece I’ve realised I should’ve added a couple more points in response to Jim Wallace.

    • The filter-mongers continually jumble together two unrelated issues:
      1. Stopping the creation, distribution and consumption of child pornography, which is about stopping a small, deeply-hidden network of people whose activities are completely criminal underth law; and
      2. Preventing minors from accessing material which isn’t appropriate for their age, according to the wishes of their parents or guardians, but which is legal for adults access.

      These are two very different problems and are likely to need two very different solutions.

    • The filter-mongers have not demonstrated that central ISP-level filtering is the most effective way of tackling either of these issues.

    I’m sure there’s more…

  3. I did a fancy influencing and negotiating course at a uni business school not too long ago and the basic premise of all negotiation is that both parties must be willing to discuss the issues and be capable of rational debate. The willfully ignorant and tecnically clueless pro-censorship filteristi fail on both these criteria, hence rational debate cannot occur.

  5. @Fitzroyalty: You’ve nailed it! Geeks are used to dealing with logic and clarity of expression: computers simply won’t respond to rhetoric. So when they (we) see an argument which consist mostly of rhetorical tricks we try to bring it back to facts and reasoning. Jim Wallace judo-flips them out of the way each time.

    I love the word “filteristi”. I can’t see it without hearing “fistula”. And you know what that leads to…

    @Sean the Blogonaut: If you’re posting about Jim Wallace, also check out Syd Walker’s notes. The Australian Christian Lobby is not what it seems.

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