[H-GEN] Alston's censorship bill has passed

[Anthony Towns]

On Wed, May 26, 1999 at 05:38:33PM +1000, David Jericho wrote:
> On Wed, May 26, 1999 at 03:11:03PM +1000, James McPherson wrote:
> > it is a _very_ sad day for this country - Alston's idiotic internet censorship 
> It is a sad day. I wonder if the ABA would care to reimburse these ISP's
> for the increased staff numbers, or pay damages to ISP's who won't be able
> to carry out the respective duties. 

I wonder if they reimburse Pizza companies for the extra staff they
have to hire because they're drivers can't legally go at 120km/h to do
their deliveries. I wonder if they pay damages to restaurants whom they
shut down because they can't get rid of their rat infestation.

If it's a legal requirement, it's a legal requirement. You don't get
reimbursement or damages if you can't toe the line.

> So we have to have one class of users for adults, another for children.

That doesn't seem unreasonable. We have multiple classes like that
everywhere anyway -- in cinemas, airports, restaurants, public
transport. We don't (at least, nominally) let kids drink, smoke or
have sex. Society's very ageist like that.

I'm honestly not at all convinced by the "technical" arguments against
this bill. Sure, restricting access to all offensive material is
impossible, but, at least ttbomk, that's not what they require ISPs to
do. And sure, restricting access is more onerous than not, but, well,
so is keeping your kitchen clean when you're trying to run a restaurant.

Personally, the only thing I have against this bill is that it's
censorship, and that I think censorship is fundamentally wrong. If
you don't want to look a smut, don't look at smut. If you're sick of
altavista giving you twenty links to pr0n for every relevant web page,
use a different search engine. If you get sick of the guy in front of
you in the labs looking at smut all the time, tell him he's a pervert
and to do it at home.

And don't get me started about all the crap about "You're all immoral
child pornographers!". Or that the only group willing to stand up for
freedom of speech in Australia is the Eros foundation.

Feh.

Cheers,
aj, who'd be entertained to see the Australian ISP industry go on strike.

-- 
Anthony Towns <aj at humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. PGP encrypted mail preferred.

       ``There's nothing worse than people with a clue.
             They're always disagreeing with you.'' 
                                 -- Andrew Over
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