Mark Newton will be on ABC Radio National Thursday morning at 09:05 EST to spar with the director of the Australian Christian Lobby Jim Wallace over Australia’s net censorship plan. For those who haven’t seen Wallace’s factually-limp opinion piece on filtering from earlier this week I suggest you check it out before listening. My response to Wallace is here.
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Somebody Think Of The Children is a blog about censorship and moral panic in Australia, with a focus on Internet censorship. It is edited by Michael Meloni.
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4 Responses to “Mark Newton debates Jim Wallace, Radio National, 28 January”
I’ve served up a small appetiser in expectation of the main feast: Australia’s Holy Man likes a Good War
This morning I find myself praying that Mark wipes the floor with this unctuous character.
Is that a sin?
By Syd Walker on Jan 29, 2009
The interview can be heard at: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/default.htm ; although your blood will boil when Jim Wallace claims that peer-to-peer networking can be filtered just like HTTP data, and Mark runs out of time to refute this.
By Marcus on Jan 29, 2009
Thanks for the link, Marcus.
I have to say, I was less frustrated by Mark Newton not getting to respond to the P2P claims (Jim Wallace basically accused Newton of lying/not knowing what he was talking about. Might have sounded credible if Newton’s credentials weren’t, “Network Engineer” and Wallace’s credentials didn’t end with, “God”) than I was by neither the moderator, nor Mark addressing Wallace’s comments about the Get-Up poll. Someone really should have taken him to task of the 2003 poll in favour of a magic, automatic porn filter he kept waving around like a flag.
Actually, scrap that. The most offensive thing about the debate was the ease with which Wallace threw around accusations of his opponents lying. I half expected Wallace to turn on the moderator at some point (which would have been hilarious) – sadly, he didn’t .
By Icaria on Jan 29, 2009