Internet Censorship
I know I said I'd make a post ages ago, and then I didn't, but I'm here now!
Mostly I just want to rage about the Australian government's plan to censor our internet, and my God, I am raging.
In essence, I don't mind what they're doing. After all, they're trying to rid the internet of child pornography and abuse and incest and the like. Wicked. The problem, however, is that to do that they're going to place a blanket ban over all sites that refuse classification and have even a small amount of this kind of thing. Not only that, but in Australia 'child abuse publications' refers not only to actual children, but to any representation of a person, fictional or otherwise, 'in a sexual context' or 'as the victim of torture, cruelty, or physical abuse'. The definition of a person is extremely broad, and it means characters or people in games, animation, comics, art work, and text all count.
That, of course, means that if the policy goes ahead Australians can kiss LJ, fan fic sites, manga sites, imageboards, forums, and a whole range of others goodbye, simply because all of those have at least a little of the content that will be blacklisted.
Honestly, I love Australia, but if this goes through I'm moving to another country as soon as I can. It cuts way too close to violating free-speech (which isn't written into our Constitution anyway, so it's perfectly legal that they do this) for my liking. Plus I'm going to miss fandom and LJ way too much. :D
If you're interested, you can visit this site for news about what's going on and this site for ideas about what we can do to try to prevent it. There's also this post which probably explains it all a little better than I can.
ETA: It's ironic that this government was supposed to be freeing us from the 'culture of fear and suppression' that we apparently had under the Liberal government. This government is even worse than the last.
Mostly I just want to rage about the Australian government's plan to censor our internet, and my God, I am raging.
In essence, I don't mind what they're doing. After all, they're trying to rid the internet of child pornography and abuse and incest and the like. Wicked. The problem, however, is that to do that they're going to place a blanket ban over all sites that refuse classification and have even a small amount of this kind of thing. Not only that, but in Australia 'child abuse publications' refers not only to actual children, but to any representation of a person, fictional or otherwise, 'in a sexual context' or 'as the victim of torture, cruelty, or physical abuse'. The definition of a person is extremely broad, and it means characters or people in games, animation, comics, art work, and text all count.
That, of course, means that if the policy goes ahead Australians can kiss LJ, fan fic sites, manga sites, imageboards, forums, and a whole range of others goodbye, simply because all of those have at least a little of the content that will be blacklisted.
Honestly, I love Australia, but if this goes through I'm moving to another country as soon as I can. It cuts way too close to violating free-speech (which isn't written into our Constitution anyway, so it's perfectly legal that they do this) for my liking. Plus I'm going to miss fandom and LJ way too much. :D
If you're interested, you can visit this site for news about what's going on and this site for ideas about what we can do to try to prevent it. There's also this post which probably explains it all a little better than I can.
ETA: It's ironic that this government was supposed to be freeing us from the 'culture of fear and suppression' that we apparently had under the Liberal government. This government is even worse than the last.