02 July 2009

How to tell if your country is illiberal

When the People's Republic of China is less censorial censorious than your own country, you might be living in an unfree country.

The PRC has bowed to demands by its own users and not put the Green Dam Youth Escort internet filtering software mandatorily on every computer sold in its borders.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Great Wall of Australia will filter out adult games, including Second Life. Even the Christians recognise this is more draconian than censorship in China. These games aren't illegal, mind, just unclassified, because there is no adult classification category in the Censorship Board scheme, and the filter will block all RC (refused classification) games irrespective of why. This includes accessing Second Life domains, as well as downloading the game, which can still legally be bought in person.

Have we had enough of teh stoopid yet?

2 comments:

John Morales said...

Sigh. More than enough, I'm hoping sanity will prevail.

PS 'censorial' means belonging or relating to a censor (or a censor's functions); the word you should've used is 'censorious'.

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John S. Wilkins said...

Thanks.

I was hoping sanity would prevail a year back. Since then I have become convinced that insanity will only increase. The minister is a raving lunatic and it's clear that the Labor government is kowtowing to the fundamentalists.

Australia is not a liberal nation, in Mill's sense