Not quite Bushbasher.

Sixty years ago, one did not see such public moral indifference to the exploitation of children but again I see a male who speaks only of his own pleasures. Sixty years ago there was not the jaded and ego-driven addictions to pleasuring one self with electronically visual aids (and readily available to kids).

This industry is the actual foundation for a fake new economy and there are plenty of poor saps craving smut and fueling this so-called prosperity.

In addition, the male spends billions annually on Viagra etc for erectile dysfunction. Viva Viagra! Well not quite - there's more!

Now there's the antidepressants, and medically unnecessary sex-enhancement surgery. This includes untold numbers of innovative penile implants, tattooed eyebrows, hair transplants and more. You could probably make a case for Johnny Howard but mainly as a public-health measure!

And many wives and partners seek similar treatments to hold their man - submissive to the male’s sexual fantasies, driven by porn.

The objections to censorship are understandable, however the males on this thread are far more vociferous over the risk of losing their porn sites than their right to free speech or FOI on other important matters.

Where were they when the esteemed Sir Charles Court in WA introduced the innocuous 54B clause forbidding a public gathering in excess of three people? Silent!

Or Costello’s bill last year which would allow the ACCC to bring representative court actions for breaches of secondary boycott provisions where we, the taxpayer, would compensate businesses which may be operating unethically? This bill was planned to catch lone campaigners, community groups, NGOs, lobby groups and even the media -anyone whose campaign for what the law calls a "secondary boycott" would be gagged and prosecuted to suffer the burden of financial pain.

However, one must not allow one’s vision to be tainted by the few sad sacks here who, driven by an addiction to a sumptuous banquet of perverse porn sites, refuse to offer solutions which would mitigate the electronically aided sexualisation of little kids.

Bronwyn wrote, "... the prospect of internet censorship doesn't concern me as much as it does you, ..."

Well, if it doesn't, it should.

Or do you happen to believe that the corporate newsmedia and the Government can be relied upon to tell us the truth about, for example, Iraqi WMD's, the babies said to be thrown out of incubators in Kuwait in 1990 (http://911review.com/precedent/decade/incubators.html), the 'false flag' terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 (http://911blogger.com http://911research.wtc7.net/) the out-of -control destruction of Australia's environment in order to line the pockets of corporations, privatisation, etc?

It astonishes me that supposedly informed and intelligent people on this forum are clamouring to hand across the decisions as to what they can and cannot view in the privacy of their own homes to faceless government bureaucrats.

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dickie,

You have not provided any evidence that access to porn is the cause of all the social ills and commercial exploitation that you have described.

Even if it could be proven, and it could be proven that mandatory Internet filtering would prevent access to porn, both legal and illegal, how could the harm prevented possibly be greater than the actual harm caused in recent years by the deliberate withholding of information from us by our corporate newsmedia?

I am talking about:

* the election and re-election of President Bush and John Howard,
* deregulation of the U.S. economy and the consequent world-wide financial calamity,
* the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter, which may well end up costing $3trillion (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2008/2199248.htm) and may well have caused the deaths of over 1 million Iraqis (http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html),
* global environmental devastation.

Our only possible hope of preventing or mitigating such calamities is by having our own means to bypass the misinformation fed to us by governments and the corporate newsmedia.

Dickie wrote, "Where were they when ... Sir Charles Court ... introduced the innocuous 54B clause forbidding a public gathering in excess of three people? Silent!"

How do you know this, and, in any case, isn't it beside the point?

dickie, you seem to have a real problem understanding/coming to term with what a human being is. Seriously, you need to re-think your entire world view (as do some others) whereby people do not deserve to pursue their lives (and happiness) *however they choose* without others dictating how to live their lives (usually in the absence of freedom). This is what the end point of your argument is, no matter how you would go about implementing your totalitarianist view of society.

dickie>"Where were they when the esteemed Sir Charles Court in WA introduced the innocuous 54B clause forbidding a public gathering in excess of three people? Silent!"

The expectation that members of the public in their day to day lives know about every piece of legislation passing through government is disingenuous and phony. Secondly people object to many laws passed and nothing can ever be done about it, because the government chooses to do whatever it wants anyway. We have seen this on numerous occassions in the past.

dickie, You appear to have really bought into the acidic mentality of believing no individual has personal responsibility (those electing to do cosmetic surgery) and society is to blame. How about you start urging that sesame street and play school is played at all times so that no adults learn any indecency. How about you ask to ban alcohol because of all the evil violence and anti-social drinking behaviour it causes? There is no end to the selective imposition of your own personal values that you project onto others. And I can't stress how much it tests my patience to have someone else state their authoritarian, close-minded, evil, repressive values as superior to my own or any others' and are of any worth at all. It's generally not worth my time, but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and i try to do my little part to stem the tidal wave of bigots and fearful people.

Your honesty in your two posts here is refreshing, Bronwyn. Yes, women like filters because they don't like porn, and equally the reason most men oppose them is because the do like porn. The rest of the noise here is mostly smokescreen. Arguing these points alone gets you nowhere, so it would be nice if the discussion progressed onto looking at the merits of the proposal itself.

Clive argues filtering is just an extension of the current ratings scheme. If this is true it is a good argument for the filters, as the current scheme represents a working compromise. So lets look at where his analogy breaks down.

Clive says what is censored now won't change, but Conroy said the scope will broadened and specifically mentioned euthanasia. I assume Clive thinks our democracy will bring such plans to heel. Probably.

The filters are computers and thus moronically apply rules. Unlike the ratings board they will censor things they shouldn't - like gynaecological diseases, contraception, sex crime reporting and midwifery. The best (and slowest) filters do this around 1% of the time, the worst around 10% of the time. Most people come to find it very irritating.

The blacklist is a list of juiciest sites on the internet. It has to be given to Australia's 400 ISP's. There are a lot of similar lists around the world, and they have all leaked. After all what school boy could resist a list of the worst sites on the 'net?

Clive says this list won't be abused, just as our existing censorship mechanisms aren't abused. They aren't abused because they are transparent - we can see what is censored and why. A URL black list can't work this way as the filter is too porous. We won't know what's on there, why it was put there, or who did it. Clive is wrong - it will be abused. For example, invariably, the filtering companies manage to filter sites critical of their product.

So girls, is joy of controlling what we guys do in the privacy of our own time worth the compromises involved?

I’ve often been described as an anarchist (probably long before david f was out of his nappy :-)

One particular anarchist who I’ve always admired, respected and taken immense pleasure from is the French poet and writer, Francois Marie Arouet. So it is completely vacuous, disingenuous and misguided to imply I have no appreciation for what anarchy is.

Some posters here are using anarchy (and freedom) as a crutch to defend their reasoning. I would go so far as to say (judging by their comments) that they haven’t a clue of what responsible anarchism is about.

By definition, anarchists argue that it is the individual’s right to nurture their own morals and behave according to their own view of what is right or wrong, and good or bad. They argue that if enough people of like mind can come together in a common cause, they can overturn the accepted norm.

It’s true; anarchists do support an absence of government intervention. One problem (as I see it) is that many anarchists are not responsible. They use the pursuit of freedom in the name of anarchy to give credence to their own sometimes perverted behaviour, without due respect to others who may be hurt by their actions. Anarchists reject the idea of state or government intervention (promoting individualistic and economic self control), they can’t have one without the other – particularly in a society like we have here in Australia.

Corollary: Can you imagine government MPs (of any persuasion) dressing up in their fish-net stockings and demanding their right to individual freedom in the Cabinet room?

What people do in their own privacy does not concern me. What does is the direction a post-modern western society is heading. These are the ethical questions Hamilton is challenging us with.

I would go to the demonstrations to see ‘democracy’ in action.

Oh ... Francois Marie Arouet, he is better known as Voltaire, one of our greatest philosophers. He penned the line “Once a philosopher, twice a pervert” – david f, I suggest you look it up, you might learn something. Vive le revolution!

Q&A wrote: “I’ve often been described as an anarchist (probably long before david f was out of his nappy :-)”

David f is 83. You’re over a hundred?

Anarchists believe that ordinary people without the external compulsion of government can form a decent society.

I am quite familiar with Voltaire. He did not share that belief and had contempt for the common people.

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.”

Voltaire believed that religion was necessary as a means of control.

Another statement of his contempt.

“Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.”

Fortunately for him he died the year before the French Revolution.

Q&A wrote: Oh ... Francois Marie Arouet, he is better known as Voltaire, one of our greatest philosophers. He penned the line “Once a philosopher, twice a pervert” – david f, I suggest you look it up, you might learn something.

I suggest you look more into Voltaire and correct your misconceptions.