Actually I'm a little tired of having to defend myself from the "social Conservatives".
They are *not* conservative, they are radical and aggressive! It is the "concervatives" who favour Prohibition, some of the most socially destructive laws ever invented.
It is the same "Conservatives" who quietly allowed our schools to teach Creationism. (Teaching that which is known to be false is a form of abuse to my mind.)
The same ones that did not lift a finger when their church culture harboured child abuse...
Introducing censorship to Australia is not very conservative, it is a massive leap backward.
It is time we started calling folks who want a non-free society "radical anti-freedom", not "social conservatives".
Jonny Howard legitimised the "re-centering" of our culture to the radical Right. Time to claim it back.
I don't care how restrictive you want your own lives...back off from mine!

We all know that an internet site ending in EDU indicates that the site denotes an educational institution. GOV indicates a government agency. Why not have a XXX ending to adult sites?

It would be relatively simple for ISP's to control access to any site with a XXX ending. If all 'adult' sites could be so named - eg http://explicitpictures.xxx.au - ISP's could easily block or manage access; Adults would have to explicitly request for access to such material from their broadband provider. Parents would find that ISP's could block access to their computers to all such XXX sites if so requested. This new rating would mean that legitimate sites - eg say those dealing with breast cancer, etc - would not be impeded. It would also put the onus on the parents to seek appropriate action by their ISP without the 'censorial' big-brother action by government.

Yuri: "If all 'adult' sites could be so named - eg http://explicitpictures.xxx.au"

This proposal has come up over and over again, and has been rejected as many times. There are several reasons:

1. There are remarkably few sex sites in Australia, so just doing it here would have almost no effect.

2. If you did have a global '.xxx' domain it would be ignored if it actually reduced the traffic to the '.xxx' sites. They aren't charities. They need traffic to survive.

3. The same people who want the internet filtered worry this would have the reverse effect. Rather than reducing the amount of porn people see, it would increase it because it would become easier to find.

The suspicion is that most people who look at these sites do so because they enjoy them. This suspicion is almost certainly correct. It is unusual to come across xxx sites by accident. For example the major search engines (eg Google) filter them out of their search results by default. The reality is you are probably about as likely to find a raunchy "People" magazine in a waste bin as you are to accidentally hit a porn web site.

So the real thrust of this proposal isn't to prevent people from accidentally viewing sites they don't want to see. It is to prevent people from seeing web sites they actively seek out. It turns out that is much harder to do. If adults or teenagers (in particular teenagers) want to share things they will - via email, chat rooms, peer to peer, or whatever. Renaming bad sites to '.xxx' would have no effect - even if it was possible.

Completely ban all sex and pornography in all media and just stick to the nice family values or the children may see something.

Sex is naughty and nothing at all to do with families.

What?.

Are you sure about that?.

OH.

I do not know where the author gets his assumption that censorship is the preferred option of the right side of politics.

Anyone who has, maybe in a moment of folly, read any of my posts will realize I am not to the left of the political spectrum and my views in support of every individuals personal freedom of speech, freedom of viewing and freedom of creative interest are equally well documented.

My observation: it is the left wing of politics who have historically demanded to control how other people think and what they should be allowed to read and write.

Now to the matter of internet censorship.

This is an offensive interference by the ‘Krudd socialist control freaks’ in the civil rights of every adult.

Anyone venturing on the internet these days has to use a firewall and virus protection software or expect to have their PC rendered useless within 24 hours.

To manage this I use VET anti-virus software which comes with a child-protection system which intercedes between a person who does not have admin rights, via a password, and the internet to manage exposure to porn sites and chatrooms and the like.

To achieve absolute child safety, that is all that is needed. The VET system is reasonably priced, $70 pa for a 3 licence package (one each for three PCs).

The nanny state need do nothing else. The controllers of public morals do not have the right to censor my internet surfing and I resent their highhanded and arrogant interference and attempts to impose repressive regulations upon me and others who support libertarian values.

undidly said:
"Sex is naughty and nothing at all to do with families.
What?
Are you sure about that?"

Col Rouge said:
"Anyone who has, maybe in a moment of folly, read any of my posts will realize I am not to the left of the political spectrum"

Thanks guys, these gave me the biggest laughs I've had all week.