Aussies to censor the net
Following in the proud tradition of such freedom-loving regimes as China and Iran. Do politicians really not understand the internet to the extent they think if they block “bad” sites, people will remain ignorant of the contents? Fools.
MINISTER for Communications Stephen Conroy has vowed to push on with his controversial internet filtering scheme, despite a barrage of criticism.
The government’s $128.8 million Cyber Safety policy includes forcing internet service providers to block access to a secret blacklist of website pages identified as ‘‘refused classification’’ by Australian government bureaucrats.
The scheme has attracted broad opposition from communications experts, search-engine companies Google and Yahoo!, the federal opposition and members of the nation’s intellectual elite.
Critics claim the policy will not result in any meaningful dent in the availability of harmful internet content, will create significant freedom-of-speech issues and will be prone to abuse by politicians.
‘’The scope of filtered content is so broad that it could block content that would inform political and social debate,’’ Google spokeswoman Lucinda Barlow said.</em>
Oh, now why would a government want that?
