A Curfew Because There Are Criminals Out There?

Posted on: April 5, 2009, by :
No internet censorship in Australia thanks.
Image by Froosh via Flickr

Imagine you find a governments note in your letterbox stating that you have to stay at home every night after a certain hour, with the reason that there are criminals out there the police isn’t able to catch. What would be the next step? Putting everybody who obeys the laws into prison, because the streets out there are too dangerous?

Give me a break! This was my first thought when I saw the news about the Australian Internet censorship. I learned that this discussion already takes place a while, but it reached the Dutch media just yesterday. We are behind sometimes when it comes to the stuff that matters.

In every community are black sheeps who are trying to make a mess of things other people enjoy. How can a government consider to punish everybody because of a small group of abusers?

Internet has become an important part of peoples life. The world has become smaller and people begin to think more global, thanks to this facts. It isn’t the government anymore who decides for us what country we have to see as an enemy. No, in an instance we can communicate with people worldwide and decide for ourselves who we like and who we don’t.

As most of us I’m against criminal activities like child abuse and violence in all its disturbing forms. Alas, shutting down a way of distribution for this criminals and for everybody else can never be a solution. The criminals will find new ways of distribution what could make them even more powerful, while they can add everybody else on their list of collateral damage.

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with someone from the IRS (Dutch version) who disliked me because I had something to do with this Internet thing. In his eyes the Internet was the devil. He complained that he got disgusting results when he searched the web for certain terms. It was disgusting what he had to look at when he clicked on those links. My reply was: ‘Why the fuck do you click on it when you don’t want to see it? It’s your decision what to look at not of the evil Internet people. ‘ After this he disliked me even more.

I think I don’t have to go in too many details to make clear that restricting peoples Internet access is unacceptable from a democratic point of view. I think it is even immoral. More in depth technical information is to find on nocleanfeed.com.

Looking at it in a way of protecting children for Internet sources they shouldn’t see, makes it in my opinion even worse. Maybe it sounds harsh, but please leave the responisbility to the parents. They should know a little bit about responisbility when they decided to take children. You can’t force a whole country to accpet a Nanny because things getting out of control for some people.

If the government can make a list of websites to filter out, they also can make a list of the website holders to sue them if they are doing something illegal. Do I think to simple at this point?

What do you think about this Internet filter? I hope in the end it will not be implemented in Australia, because then the doors are open for other countries as well with disastrous consequences for many lovely communities.

Bless you and the freedom of free speach!
Mario

1 thought on “A Curfew Because There Are Criminals Out There?

  1. Hurray for free speech! We should never ever ever be censored. Censorship is a very slippery slope. If you censor one thing, it opens the door for censoring others. I agree, it’s up to each individual to censor himself. Go Free Speech!

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