Further to my post about Internet filtering plans by the federal government, Jon Seymour has beautifully deconstructed Senator Conroy’s announcement.
Czech artists on trial for fake nuke
Six members of the Czech art group Ztohoven, based in Prague have been charged with “spreading false information” and face up to three years in jail for hacking a TV broadcast and inserting images of a nuclear explosion.
The hack took place on 17 June 2007, when viewers watching webcam shots of Czech mountain resorts saw an explosion in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains.
Even though they’re being charged with a crime, the group was also awarded the NG 333 prize for young artists by Prague’s National Gallery together with a cash prize of 333,000 koruna (around AUD$21,000).
Hat tip to Boing Boing.
How to kill a chocolate bunny
What can I say about this wonderful short film? It’s hauntingly beautiful, well photographed with excellent colour grading — and just a little bit creepy.
Hat tip to tiny gigantic.
Used knickers, revisited
Due to popular demand, here’s a new photo of the abandoned women’s knickers I wrote about last week.
As you can see, they’ve been swept to the side of the laneway by passing traffic and, perhaps, the wind. And they’ve started to intermingle with dried leaves and other detritus.
I took the photo this afternoon. I’ve declined Cassie ST’s suggestion that I wear them on my head.
Internet censorship dumbness
The Rudd government’s plan to force ISP’s to provide a “clean feed” of the Internet free of pornography and “inappropriate material” (whatever that might be) has already generated plenty of informed criticism. However what worries me more is Senator Stephen Conroy’s disgustingly disingenuous framing of the debate.
Labor makes no apologies to those who argue that any regulation of the Internet is like going down the Chinese road. If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.
As usual, Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett hits the nail on the head, and makes my point for me.
No free speech advocate that I know of advocates such absolute freedom as to defend the provision of child pornography… But the fact it is already illegal shows just how dishonest Conroy’s statement is.
The government’s proposal is not about child pornography at all, which is already seriously illegal online and offline. It is about legal pornography and other ‘inappropriate’ material.
The arguments against this clean-feed idea are simple: it won’t work, and it opens up an unacceptable risk of further government intrusion into our freedom to communicate.
The civil liberties we lost in 2007
In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, Richard Ackland has published his “top 10” list of intrusions on our civil liberties for 2007.
“A year ago we published a list showing how our liberties had been whittled, starting with the sedition laws and ending with David Hicks. Now there is a fresh outcrop of abrasions to our rights, although, sadly, there is an eerie consistency about some of the players.”
His list includes an entire entry just for one man’s efforts:
4. Philip Ruddock. Once again the former attorney-general deserves his own special entry in the human rights hall of infamy. This time for his unique conception that an accused person can have a “fair trial” based on hearsay evidence and evidence extracted by coercion.
As number 1, Ackland mentions just a name: Dr Mohamed Haneef. I’m hoping the forthcoming judicial inquiry gets to the bottom of that debacle!