Author John Birmingham posted a great piece last week attacking Internet filtering. Apart from describing Senator Conroy’s “puckered cat’s bum thing with your mouth” when equating freedom of speech with kiddie-porn-watching, he puts what I think is the best argument: “If parents are going to plug their kids into the net it is the parents’ responsibility to look after the little darlings while they’re online. You wouldn’t set a small child loose in the city and expect the government to step in and do your child-minding for you.”
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You wouldn’t set a small child loose in the city and expect the government to step in and do your child-minding for you.
Ahhh, but the vast majority of parents do EXACTLY that with children 11 years and older.
It’s not about the “small child” — its about the pre-teen, early-teens and pubescent children.
A child has to be a functional reader and writer to be vulnerable to internet pedophilia, and the majority of these children are left unsupervised or institution supervised for the larger part of their waking hours.
Parents seem to have decided that the government will teach children Morals and Ethics as well as Reading, wRiting and ‘Rithmetic. (sigh).