Mr Rudd: me thinks he doth protest too much. tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Mr Rudd: me thinks he doth protest too much.

Posted by Claire Connelly in Politics

I don’t understand where this whole internet censorship phenomenon is coming from or what hole it crawled out of (no pun intended).

Previously I’ve written about the Australian governments plan to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the government deems ‘inappropriate’ by using a firewall. Under the plan, the government can add any ‘unwanted’ site to a secret blacklist.

Now in Britain most Internet users no longer have full access to Wikipedia as a result of internet censorship.

Due to censorship by the UK Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), most UK residents are banned from editing the volunteer-written-and-edited Wikipedia (an online encyclopedia; for anyone who doesn’t know what it is), nor can they access an article about an album by German rock group “The Scorpions.” (As it happens Australians do not have editing access to this site either).

The article was blocked for all UK users because the article contained an image of The Scorpion’s Virgin Killer album cover which could be interpreted as child pornography.

The IWF further argued that none of the images used were free images and were included under the supposed “fair-use guidelines”.

According to the fair-use terms and conditions, these album covers should not be included unless the article specifically discusses the jacket art.

Of all the articles to ban, (aside from the obvious reasons it was included on the list), an article about The Scorpions album was a strange choice.

I can think of at least ten pages that contains content which people might describe as being “objectionable” in some way.

And yet so far this one article is the only item to be blocked from UK viewers. Personally, I think the IWF has deliberately targeted Wikipedia, having chosen this image as a symbolic gesture, demonstrating the governments power to remove anything that offends prudish British sensibilities.

Wikimedia Foundation’s General Counsel Mike Godwin said: “We have no reason to believe the article, or the image contained in the article, has been held to be illegal in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world.”
“The IWF didn’t just block the image,” said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, “it blocked access to the article itself, which discusses the image in a neutral, encyclopedic fashion… The IWF says its goal is to protect UK citizens, but I can’t see how this action helps to achieve that – and meanwhile, it deprives UK internet users of the ability to access information which should be freely available to everyone.”
There seems to be a developing trend in this country – and abroad, whereby politicians are using child-protection and welfare as a justification for internet censorship.
There are a number of reasons why this is not the case:
If the government really were concerned about child safety and welfare, why not fix DOCS (in Australia) and other child welfare systems around the world?

The extent of neglect and utter disrepair of child safety services in Australia and the world over has resulted in unreported abuse allegations, or filed reports that are never checked up on, children are being lost in a broken system.

This alone is enough to indicate to me that the government is less concerned about child welfare than they are about removing all content from the internet which they consider to be subversive, offends their tastes and predispositions, or in anyway questions the status quo.

I’d be interested to see statistics on the amount of children that are neglected and abused in foster homes, orphanages, and group care, whose suffering is ongoing because the government won’t spend any money to reform the system that is responsible for their welfare.

In truth, the governments plan for internet censorship seems to be a case of finding a reasonable justification for banning sites that don’t fit the tastes of conservative politicians, (the irony, once again is rife), but I digress.

In the case of Australian censorship, sites like adult dating would be blocked under the proposed guidelines for the firewall. I’ve never used adult-dating sites, but if I had, or if I wanted to in the future – it wouldn’t be anyone else’s business but my own.

The sexual lifestyles of consenting adults is no one else’s business, and certainly not the governments business. What ever happened to the right to privacy?

Oh, that’s right – we don’t have a bill of rights in this country.

This is all just a conservative agenda of snuffing out access to sexually liberated web-site owners and viewers.

After all, they are just providing a service, along with the other many services that are available online.

If the government were truly concerned about its citizens safety, they would be targeting the makers and distributors of illegal pornography rather than banning it all together.

If the government really wanted to protect our children, they would be going after the people that are making illegal pornography readily available.

In Britain’s case we just recently heard about two sisters whose abuse by their father went on for so long that 28 years and 19 pregnancies passed before anything was done.

One of the sisters tried to contact a child welfare professional to rescue them but the welfare worker told her that she could not guarantee her safety or anonymity and promptly hung up.

This wouldn’t have happened in a system that was properly monitored and funded.

I do not see what internet censorship is going to do to help them.

It is not the governments role in this country to decide what is “inappropriate.”

The government should not be able to legislate on issues outside of the law, and yet they somehow are being empowered to decide what is best for Australians.

I find it interesting that there has been no mention of individual responsibility.

I have yet to hear anyone mention that every parent is empowered to restrict what their family sees online, by adjusting their internet security settings on their computer:

Parents can ban access to specific sites, as well as keep their settings on “high,” moreover new internet technology allows parents to individually monitor what their families are viewing online.

Are we to think that Australian parents are that lazy and incapable of ensuring their children’s safety online that they would empower the government to restrict their freedoms for them?

To me that seems terribly negligent, (this may be a case for DOCS, or wait – yeah maybe not).

If this whole internet censorship issue was motivated by concern for the safety of children, why aren’t they targeting the producers of child pornography?

Is the funding for police investigators, or federal courts so poor that they do not even know who these people are, let alone being capable of prosecuting them? If not, why not?

It is not the role of the government to act as parent, teacher, police-man, judge, and jury for children. If the government were that concerned about child safety, why not provide internet security and privacy courses for concerned parents?

Not one of these suggestions has been proposed thus far; which is why I must conclude that internet censorship is more about control and execution of a radical conservative agenda, banning anything that could be potentially offensive to people of certain sensibilities.

Which poses the question, who is forcing these people to view adult sites?

It’s clear from what Mr. Rudd has told us, that there is a developing radical agenda of porn makers who through their trickery and masterful internet marketing, are forcing people to view pornography.

It’s a terrible phenomenon, oh the shame! The children, think of the children!

We should applaud Mr. Rudd. I believe he is making it quite clear that he does not negotiate with porn makers… or members of the population he was elected to protect.

Tricky bastards these “pornos.”

It’s clear that we must do something about these porn makers and viewers, and their radical agenda, forcing people to view their sites. For shame, for shame.

But for someone who is so offended by the existence of adult sites Mr. Rudd has obviously spent a great deal of time “researching.”

We must remain forever humble at the pain and trauma this must have caused him and his colleagues.

These porn makers, they really do sucker people in don’t they? I just have one question for you: if Mr. Rudd is so opposed to adult sites or a spot of porn, why are he and his constituents spending so much time viewing them?