rubberneck, i agree fully with your condemnation with the history of australians' lethargy (when not wowsery promotion) on issues of censorship. and you may be right that some of the opposition to conroy's fascism is less than honest.

but, i'm not sure that matters hugely, nor that it was ever much different. even in countries such as america, which are culturally and legally strong on free speech. i think tom lehrer's "smut" tells it pretty well.

i'm also not sure how or why or who you're aiming at amongst posters here. the hypocrisy (is that really what you mean?) and moral cowardice is not so obvious to me.

rubberneck: "the indignant hot air from male posters is motivated by the prospect of private access to the hard porn that they like and have become accustomed to"

I should let this go. As bushbasher says anyone looking at the comments here would be scratching their heads after reading the above.

That aside, it is unlikely to be true for other reasons. The current legislation doesn't just blacklist stuff that is illegal to distribute in Australia - that is stuff "Refused Classification" in the jargon. MA15+ stuff can be blacklisted too. MA15+ can be legally viewed by anybody in Australia, child or adult. They can see it in a Movie theatre, on a DVD or on TV. Just not on the internet. That may not worry you Rubberneck, but it is understandable it would worry others - even male posters of a certain age.

Rubberneck,

It is painfully clear that the majority of the people that support the censorship of the net are blue rinsed dowagers with almost no knowledge of the internet and who feel that their age and bitterness gives them the right to control others lives.

What is obvious is that
The net filtering can easily be bypassed, so those that want the porn etc can get it anyway,
The filtering will slow down the system drastically so that the broadband I have paid for will revert to dial up speeds I had years ago.
Finally, the gov has been caught out filtering stuff that has more to do with their revenue from taxes, such as gambling, which shows that the "protection from child porn" is nothing more than a facade used to rally gullible pinheads and tar those against the plan as closet paedophiles.

I wasn't exclusively referring to posters in this particular forum, in my accusation of hypocrisy and political apathy. Wherever you see the topic raised across the Web, there is a conspicuous absence of the obvious argument that in a modern secular state, adults should not be restrained by a government from viewing sexually explicit material so long as it is consensual and legal, most particularly not involving minors or other species.

"It is painfully clear that the majority of the people that support the censorship of the net are blue rinsed dowagers with almost no knowledge of the internet and who feel that their age and bitterness gives them the right to control others lives."

? Maybe they are blue rinsed dowagers, although that seems a tendentiously cartoonish caricature. Personally I'm no supporter of "clean feeding" the net - two of my favourite sites are StraightHell and Bound Gods, both of which will almost certainly get blocked because Conroy et al. won't bother making distinctions between consensual mock-violent role-play and real sexual violence. Fortunately, I'm just a student from overseas and might well be gone again by the time Conroy gets his wicked way with your net access. In a way I hope he does, because it might just be a learning experience for rank and file Australians; legal entrenchment of freedom of expression isn't just a wet liberal preoccupation that could only be of benefit to those pesky minority groups.

"In the all-important war against pictures of boobies on the Internet, the government of Australia has spared no expense. In 2006, after conducting a study which determined that ISP-level filtering was not feasible, the nation spent $116 million to develop Internet filtering software that parents could install on computers. When this software was easily circumvented by children, the government decided to try again with an $89 million ISP-level filtering scheme based on a blacklist devised by the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA).

The ambitious filtering plan, which was announced in 2007 at an event hosted by the Australian Christian Lobby and televised live to 700 churches across the country, looked like a costly way to appease conservative voters rather than a practical approach to shielding children from seeing unclad naughty bits.

The filtering scheme is designed to have two tiers, a mandatory level of filtering that blocks "illegal" content and an optional (opt-out) level of filtering that blocks content which ACMA has determined is only suitable for an adult audience. Concerns about the scope of filtering were raised last year following a call by Australia's conservative Family First party to expand the mandatory tier so that it encompasses legal content."

When the gov controls what you think, see or do, you no longer live in a democracy.

And as for the separation of state and church ...

May be banana republic is a better description ... another power outage hit Sydney's CBD yesterday afternoon ... from about 16:45 to close to 20:30 ...

Why is the gov spending money on insubanksters, a seat on the UN Security Council, a war in the Middle East or internet filters when power, water, transport, education, justice and health can all do with more?