Irrational hatred of the Internet

“Hating the Internet because of child pornography is a bit like hating the roads because of drug trafficking. If you had no roads there would be much less of it.” A great observation from a friend today.

Yes, “bad things” happen online, just as “bad things” happen anywhere. But when Clive Hamilton screeches about all the naughty things he’s found online, it looks to me like a deliberate attempt to press our emotional buttons and avoid rational debate. And he does it repeatedly.

The police don’t try to stop drug trafficking by putting a road block in everyone’s street and searching every vehicle. No, they use intelligence — in both senses of the word — to work out where best to deploy their finite resources for maximum results.

They also allocate their resources between conflicting demands so society as a whole is best protected. Their risk assessments tell them to worry more about the suspected rapists, serial killers or violent thugs in their community than some kid with a few grams of weed.

The people who actually understand child protection continually remind us that the greatest threats to children are the same as they always have been — abuse in their own home by family and close family friends, poverty, and bullying by their peers. Why oh why do we have to keep repeating that, Senator Conroy?

4 Replies to “Irrational hatred of the Internet”

  1. I knew a child who was abused by her parents, when I was a child, and it was a very very terrible thing. It saddens me when we have to hide from the grim reality of it all when we look for scapegoats like the internet.

  2. @yewenyi: Agreed. I’ve heard far too many stories from people who’ve been affected by abuse as a child, of various kinds. I’m truly disgusted when I see the picture being distorted to score political points or to make a buck flogging a product that’ll magically solve some largely-imagined problem.

    It also disturb me to see the term “family-friendly” being turned into some… but no. I’ll stop there. For today, anyway.

  3. ‘Herr Gutenberg, we’re worried about this new invention of yours. Someone might use it to print dirty books….’

  4. Attention for the Clive Hamiltons and the Steve Conroys of this world,

    Dear Stilgherrian: It’s people like the above mentioned people whose lives are dominated by emotions, rather than logic.

    QUESTION: If one renamed a road called North Road, and named it ‘The Road of the 10,000 raped babies’; which one was have the most traffic?

    I believe this to be your answer. Only trouble is North Road is logical and tells you the direction it is going. Think of all the putative orgasms the brain-dead would have before rushing to check it out, before someone woke up that it was all a sick joke. Rather like themselves, do you not think?

Comments are closed.