Spiked Online ramps up UK coverage of Aussie filter
December 10, 2008 – 11:35 pm
Spiked Online, a UK publication with the modest ambition of making history as well as reporting it, has published three articles on Australia’s net censorship plan.
Guy Rundle gives a detailed run down of the proposal and its conservative connections in his article, Tear down Australia’s Great Firewall Reef (c’mon Guy, it’s Great Barrier Web). Rundle writes:
There is nothing ‘Family First’ about a policy that deprives parents of the right to decide on what comes into their homes via the internet and puts it in the hands of the state instead. But of course, ‘Family First’ is about something else – the imposition of a conservative Christian morality across the whole of Australian society.
In ‘Digital Natives’ take on censorious Kevin, Danu Poyner shares his experience in the ongoing fight to stop mandatory filtering:
From the moment the geeks heard about the so-called ‘clean feed’, we went to arms. We fought it on blogs and on forums, on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. This was to be a war on our own turf, and we were ready. Angry geeks may not sound so scary, especially when pitted against a government armed with a large majority and a powerful decoy like ‘protecting the children’, but what they didn’t count on was the very strength of the force they were trying to muzzle. We were connected.
While Kerry Miller investigates the role Clive Hamilton and the Australia Institute has played:
With regard to pornography, Hamilton casts his net quite wide. He uses the bogeyman of child porn to provoke moral outrage (despite the fact that child porn is already illegal and, since it is hidden, no-one sees it ‘accidentally’), and then hitches a ride on this to condemn almost all other porn. Michael Flood has even mooted the idea of an ‘ethical porn’, which depicts people engaged in ‘normal loving sexual behaviour’. The availability of material which shows men ejaculating on women’s faces, double penetration, male-female anal sex, bondage or simulated rape scenes is seen as just obviously socially dangerous. ‘Normal’ sex, as defined by Hamilton and his supporters, should be… well, I don’t know quite what, but certainly very politically correct and restrained. It seems that the liberal censors would like the government to find a way of censoring sexual fantasies, and imposing the ‘correct line’ on sex.
11 Responses to “Spiked Online ramps up UK coverage of Aussie filter”
Somebody needs to tell my girlfriend how much she must hate herself for her to want to do all these depraved things with me. And here I thought she was a good, fun, mentally stable, feminist woman of great integrity. Flood has now made me see how awfully sick she must be.
By Matt on Dec 11, 2008
http://forums.australianwomenonline.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=2477#p2477
Meanwhile, some Australian women with their own websites and a professed “I understand how the internet works and I support the ISP filter” just don’t get it.
By Sansha on Dec 11, 2008
@Sansha
Refering to the AWO forum and the 16 yo filter cracker, It’s my understanding he didn’t crack the filter. As Windows defaults to a administrator logon, he mealy shut down the filter service, had he been only given user privileges he couldn’t have done it.
By Big Pete on Dec 11, 2008
Three great articles, especially Kerry’s. I hope that CAPPE http://www.cappe.edu.au/ regrets hiring Clive Hamilton.
By Sam D on Dec 11, 2008
Jesus christ, reading that AWO forum, that Deborah Robinson doesn’t really care much for actual facts or any real debate. Then the last post one of the admins is comparing the “panic” over the Y2K bug and the filter.
By Matthew on Dec 11, 2008
I was scrolling through that forum and they seem to show people against the filter as people who are not any alternative solution. if they just did their research they would see the number of people offering other solutions such as; PC’s in the family room, signing up with ISP’s that already offer a ‘clean feed’, installing Net Alert and extra money for police to use against Child Porn. However, i’m still not convinced that we had a problem to begin with, there is no need to implement this filter, it’s just not nessecary.
By Jarrod on Dec 11, 2008
I’ve always been partial to ‘Great Barrier of Grief’.
By voracity on Dec 11, 2008
@Matthew: You’ll notice she has the typical “blinker set” on, the one where she ignores all rational points while putting in irrational ones of her own.
I read through it while trying to refrain from bashing my head against a brick when reading her responses. The upside: At least she can’t use the “you just want your porn!” against the female dissenters.
By Sansha on Dec 12, 2008
As much as I loathe and am totally against the idea of an internet filter, I wonder if the current protests against it will actually make the government back down. I think the root of the problem is the current legislation. The legislation already provides for internet censorship of content over MA15+ as well as internet filtering, so it could be argued that the government is just doing its job in enforcing existing legislation. I think we need to go back and get our totally draconian and invasive internet censorship and privacy laws scrapped. Otherwise, I have a feeling that this idea of a filter will just return to haunt us over and over, for as long as there are conservative moral crusaders and power hungry government departments around.
By Daniel on Dec 12, 2008
thats a good point Daniel, in regards to scrapping current legislation can we add the Internet Gambling Act 2001 to the list along with allowing all other states in Australia to have the option to provide X18+ material.
By Jarrod on Dec 12, 2008
“As Windows defaults to a administrator logon, he merely shut down the filter service, had he been only given user privileges he couldn’t have done it.”
Vista doesn’t, though there are ways around it, such as password grabbers that run from a boot disk and can decrypt the password file
By Stephen on Dec 15, 2008