Tag Archives | Telstra

You can’t censor the Net

As I blogged last week Telstra and Optus are debating whether to enact their censorship filters this month and try to stop what they consider “undesirable content”.

While the big boys prevaricate, here’s what we humble internet users know: you can’t stop anything by trying to censor the web. My daughter found a site last week where tweenage girls post photos of themselves in pornographic poses. The blog has gone viral among teenage boys and found its way into our home via Facebook.

There seemed to be no commercial reason for the site. No pimping. Just another look-at- me, narcissistic blog-site, indicative of a generation of self-photographing girls. An amped-up version of Facebook which is full of pouting jailbait at the best of times. As a mother and feminist, I was pretty shattered. But its existence proves my point. It’s impossible to censor the Net, especially these days. Anyone can set up a site for free.

But far more importantly, once you censor one site, where do you draw the line? Racism, sexism… and then what? Anti Government sentiment, Erotica, art? And who’s to judge — certainly not the corporate world.

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And read my full opinion in Saturday’s The Australian

 

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Censorship How Dare They!

Writing to you about something very unsexy. The move by Telstra & Optus to ban internet

The move by Telstra and Optus to voluntarily censor hundreds of internet sites which it deems unfit for us to view under the emotive pedophile argument is outrageous. It’s a story that has largely gone under the radar, and I’m not sure why. It is the biggest threat to civil liberties and free speech in this country we’ve ever experienced and we should be outraged. Within 2 weeks we’ll all be boiled frogs. Some of the sites banned include an anti-euthanasia site and other political sites unsavory to the Government. The service providers are voluntarily following the Government’s hugely unpopular recommended list which means half the country will have their legitimate adult content censored alongside other political sites; all to allegedly stop pedophiles who largely don’t operate out in the open anyway.

Here is a snippet of what ran in yesterday’s The Australian: MOST Australian internet users will have their web access censored next month after the country’s two largest internet providers agreed to voluntarily block more than 500 websites from view. Read also this Courier Mail newspaper’s commentator.

Who the are these two companies to dictate what I watch in the privacy of my bedroom? Change Servers!

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