Pelican, I should point out that pornography is not so easy to stumble upon by accident, may be filtered with commercial filters already in existence and available at stores, online etc. The problem is, all sites are required to declare themselves adult-only sites or general viewing sites (which affects how they show up in web-searches) to fall on the right side of the law. If someone were to wrongly place pornographic material on a general site, and this would not be detectable by commercial filters, there is no basis to assume a government filter will be any different.

Also, you state that illegal material should be banned. Child pornography is an obvious one. Pornography or exploitative/abusive material for enjoyment consumption like bestiality is another;
But then it becomes very hard to draw the line.

Things like hate-speech, photos of political violence or abuse, scandals, hate-preachers, guides on euthanasia, grizzly photos of civilian casualties in a warzone might also come under 'illegal', but add an extra precedent that it would be more important people are able to verify and understand such things existing, than continue on blind to them. To block such material starts a rather dangerous precedent.

stezza, well blew a big whole in that argument, i had totally forgotten the ignorant fundamentalists that do what ever they can to destroy education and knowledge in our societies. I do think Runner might have something to say on that.
King Hazza, you are depending on the general public to be intelligent. Sadly this is the one thing that i have found the public not to be. They generally allow themselves to be influenced by the mentality of the local shopping mall and the nightly news. These will all supply the miss information that i was talking of and is why we always seem to have poor chices at election time between dumb and dumber.

King Hazza is right. There are many ways for deviants to get around filters of any sort on the internet.

If we agree to filters for child porn etc, we will find that there will be some other sites that will also be affected- leading to our right to freely surf the net for whatever we legally want.

We don't want to live in a society where the Government decides what we can and can not see on the internet.

It should be up to parents to decide what internet filters are appropriate for all children in their own household.

The government would be better placed to seek out and jail all those deviants who search for kiddie porn and the like, rather than destroying everyone else's internet experience in a democratic country.

Suzeonline

>>The government would be better placed to seek out and jail all those deviants who search for kiddie porn and the like, rather than destroying everyone else's internet experience in a democratic country.<<

To which I would add seeking out the producers of child porn - stop the trade at the source.

“The free flow of information is the free flow of creative energy that enriches and enhances a society, giving it the chance to transform itself into something that was before unimagined. To this potential wonder, there is no place for Senator Conroy and his dread dark age vision.”

If we consider the internet merely a new or another way of people communicating, we see it as an evolution in letter writing, books and all the individual pleasure and enrichment that brings.

To the exploitation of children

There are cheap software tools parents can acquire which limit THEIR children’s access to “dangerous” sites, those of either a salacious X rated nature or where predators might lurk such as chat rooms etc.

I note “THEIR Children”, not Senator Conroy’s children.

When tools exist for parents to safely supervise their children, we do not need a state enforced nanny, who will censor the internet and restrict the free flow of ideas for adults, as well as children, under the spurious disguise of protecting juveniles.

Another point, if we care for young children, we do not send them off alone into public parks where deviants might lurk we go with them. So too the way of keeping your kids safe on the internet is to be with them when they explore, instead of using the internet as a cheap alternative to a tutor or child minder.

Censorship is censorship and it has always been applied for the wrong purpose, simply because it is an opportunity for the abuse of power by those who seek to enforce their right to regulate others.

I would suggest everyone make it an election issue

It is your “right of choice” which you are talking about

Vote Labor for Censorship without Choice

Vote Liberal to retain your freedom to have a Choice

Nairbe, either which way you put it, the internet is definitely poised to help people become wiser and better informed, and most importantly, more capable of independent thought- especially when you compare the level of knowledge (and access to knowledge) we have now, as compared to the good ol' 90s where the media was the ONLY source of up-to-date information about the world (give or take 6 months) we had, and their opinions were the only ones being heard.

Sadly such an arrangement just doesn't reel in the volumes of suckers that so many got rich on in the past, and so naturally such an arrangement would have a lot of enemies. I don't normally make historical comparisons, but this is very precisely close to the Mandarins of the last Chinese Empire trying to stop the broader public getting an education and weaken their own privileged spot over society. Labor being an entity that clearly, relies DEARLY on ignorant suckers to survive.