Censorship gone crazy
Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2010 10:57 am
So I'm feeling very envious of all you lucky Americans out there with your "right to freedom of speech". Hell the Australian dollars doing pretty good, if I actually had some money (alas I am a student) I would consider moving there.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I live in Australia. While Australia is a wonderful country with beautiful beaches and many other redeeming qualities, it's also a country that seems to be run by a bunch of dinosaurs with 'old fashioned' views... You know, the old man down the street that screams at little kids to get off his lawn and shouts racial absentees because back in his day Australia had the whites only policy so only 'good honest Christians' could get in the country. Well fortunately it's not the 'good old days' anymore, in fact it's the information age! We have these amazing things called computers now, but unfortunately technology is apparently scary to so many... Like some kind of techno-witchcraft. Actually technology isn't the only scary thing, all these opinions and sources of free media provided by this 'internet' how terrifying. Why people could start to think in a way unaligned with the ideologies that the old men in power have!
So what to do about it? Hey I hear china has a giant internet filter, what a great idea. Let's bring one in. We can claim we are protecting the poor simple minded citizens from criminal websites. The very mention of child pornography should shut up any young whippersnapper that says, "The government could use this too disallow access to opinion sites." While we are at it, let's not reveal the sites we are banning. After all the people should trust us not to be corrupt in any way, why would we want to abuse our power we are just helping people by telling them what they can and can't look at/read/think about. We should have 2 black lists, the first is an optional blacklist that censors content we think people may find offensive. The second a mandatory blacklist for sites that we decided must be censored.
Now humorously the blacklist was leaked. After this the site that the blacklist was leaked too was unavailable to Australians, Wikileak.com. Furthermore a site that was anti-giant internet filter with a domain name the same as the minister pushing for it was promptly shutdown due to some strange clause, giving it, quote "3 hours to explain its case for breaching this clause". Again humorously, a near identical name was re-bought.
Links on internet filter:
...Quick censor the anti-censorship!
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/ ... 61100.html
http://stephenconroy.com.au/
Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating the oldness and quantity of government officials who approve this. But the fact is Australia is ridiculous with its censorship laws. In Australia there is currently no R18+ rating for games, this means that games that are R18+ are refused classification in Australia and therefore unavailable. Actually many of these games get a second 'toned down' version made by the developers which then gets released in Australia anyway. One of the many ironies of this is that it leads to games that should really be R18+ being released as MA15+ with only minor changes. Fallout3 is a lovely example. It was refused classification because it mentioned real world drugs as having positive effects. In response to this the names of the drugs were changed and this version was released in Australia as MA15+, complete with heads that sprayed goo when you shot them.
Links on R18+:
the one that I prefer more :P Because it's way more 1 sided and less serious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQ2cpkCXss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebe9BEe0 ... L&index=33
That is the end of my rant, feel free to share your opinions one way or another... Oh and they have green lighted the internet filter in case you are wondering. So if this was happening in your country how would you react?
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I live in Australia. While Australia is a wonderful country with beautiful beaches and many other redeeming qualities, it's also a country that seems to be run by a bunch of dinosaurs with 'old fashioned' views... You know, the old man down the street that screams at little kids to get off his lawn and shouts racial absentees because back in his day Australia had the whites only policy so only 'good honest Christians' could get in the country. Well fortunately it's not the 'good old days' anymore, in fact it's the information age! We have these amazing things called computers now, but unfortunately technology is apparently scary to so many... Like some kind of techno-witchcraft. Actually technology isn't the only scary thing, all these opinions and sources of free media provided by this 'internet' how terrifying. Why people could start to think in a way unaligned with the ideologies that the old men in power have!
So what to do about it? Hey I hear china has a giant internet filter, what a great idea. Let's bring one in. We can claim we are protecting the poor simple minded citizens from criminal websites. The very mention of child pornography should shut up any young whippersnapper that says, "The government could use this too disallow access to opinion sites." While we are at it, let's not reveal the sites we are banning. After all the people should trust us not to be corrupt in any way, why would we want to abuse our power we are just helping people by telling them what they can and can't look at/read/think about. We should have 2 black lists, the first is an optional blacklist that censors content we think people may find offensive. The second a mandatory blacklist for sites that we decided must be censored.
Now humorously the blacklist was leaked. After this the site that the blacklist was leaked too was unavailable to Australians, Wikileak.com. Furthermore a site that was anti-giant internet filter with a domain name the same as the minister pushing for it was promptly shutdown due to some strange clause, giving it, quote "3 hours to explain its case for breaching this clause". Again humorously, a near identical name was re-bought.
Links on internet filter:
...Quick censor the anti-censorship!
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/ ... 61100.html
http://stephenconroy.com.au/
Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating the oldness and quantity of government officials who approve this. But the fact is Australia is ridiculous with its censorship laws. In Australia there is currently no R18+ rating for games, this means that games that are R18+ are refused classification in Australia and therefore unavailable. Actually many of these games get a second 'toned down' version made by the developers which then gets released in Australia anyway. One of the many ironies of this is that it leads to games that should really be R18+ being released as MA15+ with only minor changes. Fallout3 is a lovely example. It was refused classification because it mentioned real world drugs as having positive effects. In response to this the names of the drugs were changed and this version was released in Australia as MA15+, complete with heads that sprayed goo when you shot them.
Links on R18+:
the one that I prefer more :P Because it's way more 1 sided and less serious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSQ2cpkCXss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebe9BEe0 ... L&index=33
That is the end of my rant, feel free to share your opinions one way or another... Oh and they have green lighted the internet filter in case you are wondering. So if this was happening in your country how would you react?