26 January 2009

Filters are already being used for political purposes

Crikey reports a case in which some people whose ISPs are trialling the ACMA blacklist cannot now reach an anti-abortion site with graphic images. Whatever one thinks of prolifers, their views are not illegal, and should not be censored. If we do not stand up to political censorship now, no matter who is being censored, then we have no standing when those who administer the List (which may not at that time be our preferred set of Good Guys) add our own views.

Crikey also links to a couple of interesting pages at Liberus.Net: One on existing Australian censorship, and another on the Mandatory Filtering laws. At the same time we read that the Coalition is trying to find out why the existing scheme of "family friendly" internet filtering, which was an opt-in scheme, has been discontinued when there is nothing to replace it. If Conroy is being consistent, some filtering must be better than none, right? Not if party politics gets in the way, it seems.

No comments: