But oh no they would never do that, as much as they would never ever introduce a GST. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixn9fFatdcs

A good example, the Chinese Government blocks websites that show the Tianenmen Square Protest in an unfavorable way, in effect attempting to erase from history what they did to their own people.

Although THIS government may only use this filter to block Refused Classification content. But what about the next? Or the next government after that? They would also have the power to try and erase things that had taken place that would embarrass them.

Children Overboard - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_overboard
Oil for Food - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme

But why stop there, when you have the power to gag the media (remember TV and radio has gone digital too)

Governments come and go, but it’s their legacy can affect the people for generations, and the worse of them are never forgotten.

To Sol Rosenberg of Noosa comment 115. I very much doubt your friends do actually do have ink tattoos and live in my suburb. I regularly visit our local shopping centre and observe, where
possible, how many people if any have them. If for one minute I noticed an increase I would soon be penning a letter to my local member seeking action. The reason we don’t have many
tattooed residents is simply because we don’t have a Centrelink office, nor do we want one.

Posted by: Kevin of Double Bay 3:43pm September 15. 2008
Comment 207 of 273

He’s a bit of a spent force though, isn’t he? Yesterday’s rooster, today’s feather duster and all that. Back to minding his $150M businesses, I would think.

You know, I still have trouble getting my Range Rover into the Edgcliff shopping centre car park, the concrete ceiling is very low — maybe he can address that as the local member and make himself useful. Or perhaps I should just take the Porsche to the shops and leave the poor man in peace.

Excuse me, but I have to take a bath in pearls now.

Kevin of Double Bay

Malcolm doesn’t have an office in Vaucluse. His office is in Edgecliff, at the point where you go down the hill into Double Bay.

But visit Malcolm in his Vaucluse office by all means, I’m sure he would be glad of some company.

But I will do one thing this election that I have never done before.
I will not be voting Labor.
I will not be a part of giving this or any future government the power of gagging the common mans media. The internet.
It would only take a decision in government to add other categories to this Filter.

I will not be silenced.

How much is freedom worth, and how much of it are you willing to be taken away from you in the name of…safety.

Cry Freedom

I have only one real problem with your proposal to censor the internet. I don’t trust you. This is not personal, as I don’t trust any politician. Therefore I don’t believe you when you say that censorship will be confined only to refused content material. This absence of trust is reinforced by the fact that the banned list will be secret. If the list were public, it could be examined by all to ensure that only these sites were banned; making it secret simply increases the distrust felt by the public. Of course wikileaks and similar sites will try to publish the list, and I expect they will be banned as well. From memory, the list leaked by wikileaks some months ago included a dentist, euthanasia sites, and other sites that had nothing to do with refused content. Before I could acquiesce in a censorship system, I would need to be convinced that the administrators were perfect. Unfortunately, no-one is perfect. That is why I believe that the risks to society at present with no censorship are less that they would by with your censorship.

I looked up the websites as you recommended and I see what you mean. Appalling.

The first search I did was in http://www.google.com/images for ‘tiananmen square protest’ and as expected, images of a lone man standing in front or army tanks, and images of the massacre of Chinese civilians by it’s own Government were in the results.

Except do the same search in http://www.google.cn/images for ‘tiananmen square protest’ and the story shown through in a different light. A filtered light that does not show any protests, nor images of massacred civilians, no tanks.

If you want to know what an over zelous government can do with an internet filter, just do the same as I did.

Cry Freedom

By saying the filter is aimed at reducing child porn, terrorism threats and cyber crime Minister Conroy and the government are pulling at our heart strings by saying “we want to protect you and your children from harm”

When in fact, a blind freddy can work out that unless you can filter peer to peer networks all of the above will continue on their merry little way whilst the rest of us law abiding citizens have to deal with a bureaucratic nightmare just to continue to do what we are already doing.

If the government was really serious about protecting our children from predators then why not develop an opt in filter based on age, ie under 5yrs, 5-10yrs etc.

Again you don’t need to be terribly educated to work out education and parental support along with vigilant law enforcement is the best way to combat pedophilia and online predators not censoring the 99.5% of the people who are no threat to anyone.

As an analogy, some people decide that they will speed in their cars, so why doesn’t the government legislate that all cars must be governed at 100kmh, surely this would save lives?? No they gives us the choice to choose right over wrong and punish those who commit the wrong doing.

Finally, by allowing mandatory censorship, who is to say that in 10 -20 yrs a major event or circumstances will happen and the government of the time will use the proposed legislation, that states potentially inappropriate material may be filtered, to control information and news.

We must stop this for the protection of our liberties and to ensure a free Australia for our future generations.

Our forefathers fought ad died for this freedom.

It’s just good old fashioned scaremongering. The oldest trick in the democratic book: invent or exaggerate a bogeyman, then promise to save us from it if you give them more power.

Howard did it brilliantly in regard to boat people and terrorists coming to eat you up. Rudd does it brilliantly with evil greedy capitalists coming to sell you into slavery or whatever, and s-xual predators on the internet reaching across the network to assault your children.

And you know what? There really are s-xual predators on the internet who may be reaching out to your children. But they are not the makers of p0rn, they are rock spiders using internet chat rooms. And you cannot protect children from that by censorship; you can only protect them by education and supervision.

What Mad Cow said.

If you support “the need to look after our children” as you say, you should certainly NOT support Senator Conroy’s completely ineffective filter, because it is likely to make you ASSUME your children are safer when actually your children are NOT safer. Senator Conroy’s non-working filter will make you put your guard down.

While elsewhere on Crikey, pollsters report limited electoral fallout from this decision, in a situation of rising interest rates in 2010 Labor may need all of the votes it can muster. Its a stupid decision in principle and may yet have greater electoral consequences than predicted. A survey of voting intentions in my social network, suggests that it is vote changing and builds on a perception of Labor as (yet again) not delivering on core values.

Put your filter in place. Your political career has nowhere to go anyway so the failure wont impact you.

Yours,

GEF05