Australia Might Censor Internet Content

• I Wear Pants

  http://kotaku.com/5477799/how-australias-proposed-internet-censorship-will-and-wont-affect-video-games
  

  Proposals currently working their way through the system (it's important to note these aren't law yet, and may well be shot down before becoming so) would require that all internet service providers in Australia sign up to the federal government's filtering program, which would compile a list of banned content and block that content from appearing on a user's computer.
  
  The filter would not just include the really nasty stuff, like child porn and terrorist activity, but expand to include anything that was "refused classification" under the nation's content ratings laws. While this would mostly concern things like films (stuff like snuff flicks...pornography rated "X" is OK, as it's been rated) or comics (like some of Japan's more...extreme offerings), because of the country's classification laws, it would also expand to cover gaming material.

  This is absurd.
  
  Edit: To expand my already detailed opinion of "this is absurd" I'll say that while in practicality this probably isn't the great Orwellian scheme that we make it out to be but the point is that it's stepping towards that bleak future. Also, I realize that the article I linked was mainly talking about the implications to gaming (Australia doesn't have the equivalent of an "M" rating for games so many games are banned or censored there) and this internet filter would even block images of the game including pictures and the like used for reviews and such. So not only do our Aussie brethren not get to play the games, they can't even look at pictures of them. Same thing would apply to other media forms such as video/animation (though most of that is aimed at reducing child pornography, a noble effort, I think that these methods of prevention are unjust and ineffectual).
  
  Thoughts or any other articles not specifically related to gaming?
• I Wear Pants

  No one cares? Maybe I'm the only one that's horrified of this shit.
• El Jefe Grande

  I'm perturbed.
• majorspark

  

  Probably cause its another country.
• CenterBHSFan

  

  majorspark wrote: Probably cause its another country.

  
  But you forget that alot of people are wanting to model the US more after European countries nowdays. It's the "popular" thing to do.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  Luckily Australia isn't in Europe.
• CenterBHSFan

  

  True, it's really not part of Europe, but how much of a difference is there? America isn't part of Euro either, but it seems to be the model that people are looking to, including Australians.
  There was a topic on the old site that talked about this a little bit, and I seem to remember that the topic seemed to be pretty evenly split about the pro's/cons of governmental control. Trying to remember what incident, exactly, brought it up but i can't, and it prolly doesn't matter. Anyway, I know I said something along the lines of "America is supposed to be different" and caught alot of heck and umbrage from some folks. I suppose that there's alot of similar talk going on over in Aussie right now.
• cbus4life

  Australia doesn't have nearly the same governmental structure and the like of many European countries that, supposedly, as you claim, everyone wants us to "become."
  
  It isn't the popular thing to do, and i don't even see it that often, just because some people are in favor of a few policies that aren't even comparable, really, to what has happened in some Democratic Socialist states in Europe, does not mean that anyone wants us to "become" Europe.
• I Wear Pants

  Weren't some of you saying that we should have multiple parties in that thread about libertarianism the other day?
  
  Many of Europes countries are either multi or many party systems.
  
  Oh no! We're turning into socialist Europeans!
• Websurfinbird

  

  Not sure if it's been brought up before, but Google was under fire for allegedly censoring searches on Islam. Supposedly the search giant was blocking content that said anything negative about this religion from appearing. Users claimed that if you did a similar search for Judaism, Christianity or any other belief you would get the full gamut of both positive and negative Web sites.
  
  About a month ago, Fox News reported that Google has "fixed" the problem (http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/25/islam-broken-according-google/) and searches for Islam will no longer be filtered. The company claimed the issue was always a software glitch.
• I Wear Pants

  Google is starting to really get away from what it began as.
  
  Why do people have the need to tell people what they can and can't do when it involves no inherent harm?
  
  Also, this is one of the topics that I believe to be a much greater threat to liberty than environmental fanatics. They want me to stop using styrofoam. These people want me to stop being able to look at, watch, listen, and play what I want. < That was a reference to an earlier thread, I wasn't just going off the deep end for no reason.