>>That assumes I am incapable of making the decision for myself.

Yet our democratic system assumes I am capable of electing those who appoint the people who act in the role as censor for ACMA.

I find that completely contradictory<<

Hear, hear.

Another contradictory point - this is supposedly being done as part of a package of child protection measures, yet the emphasis has been on pornography. We are told we need the ACMA to apply the logic of their ratings guidelines, which deems child safe content G for general exhibition.

There are children under the PG age rating using the internet, so shouldn't all content rated anything over PG be backlisted?

Otherwise we would be protecting some children but not others. Aren't all children equally sacred?

I have been raised in a catholic family but i believe in abortion (ONLY) when a woman is raped not a slip up in the bedroom and if there is a risk of death to the mother .David.

Col,

There are laws currently in place.

You may be interested in the Electronic Frontiers
Australia, website:

http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/cens3.html#aust

It covers policy and/or laws regarding Internet
censorship in various countries around the world,
including Australia. It gives you an overview,
and what's currently being regulated and why.

Cheers.

Interesting thread rstuart. Although I'm most definitely pro-choice with respect to abortion, I think that the anti-abortion propaganda should be accessible to anybody, including children. Indeed, on this issue at least, my views are closest to those expressed above by my old mate Col Rouge.

Clearly, the pro-censorship crew haven't really thought through the political implications of proposals to censor the Internet. My opposition to censorship in general is precisely because of those implications, and I retain my opinion that access should only be restricted to material that is otherwise illegal. Adults should 'censor' themselves - and indeed their children - if they deem material legally available on the Internet (or anywhere else for that matter) harmful or inappropriate.

I posted that on whirlpool, I did not send that site to the
ACMA because those images offended me, I sent it because
under ACMA guidelines they would be banned, and if ever we get the
compulsory internet filter they would be unviewable. People do not understand that legal material will be blocked under the filter.

If you believe that the internet should be filtered then
all offensive images etc will be banned, you can't pick and choose, that is up to the government of the day. If you are pro-life but anti-porn, bad luck it will all go.

Snuff, rape, child abuse is illegal. If the government has
the URL's of sites that are illegal then prosecute the people who
host those sites (with the help of interpol, fbi etc) and prosecute those who view and download those files

Runner “Col Rouges analogy with heart surgery is”….
“ nothing short of pathetic. “

Those last 4 words sound like what I would use to describe your entire existence.

Foxy the thrust of the Australian sites is the phrase

“These laws enable prosecution of Internet users who make available material that is deemed "objectionable" or "unsuitable for minors".”

Who decides what is “deemed "objectionable" or "unsuitable for minors”
Similarly xFOADx “all offensive images etc will be banned,”

(I note the previous liberal government had the morality and good sense to not enact it.)

Once such institutions are in place, what happens if some corrupt politician or faceless bureaucrat then decides that a particular political opinion is “offensive”, “objectionable” or “unsuitable for minors”, such as KKK, Black Panthers, or the ravings of various Muslim clerics?

And if someone decides the KKK is offensive, how soon after that is it that less strident and more generally acceptable critics of government become “offensive”, “objectionable” or “unsuitable for minors”?

I might seem a little dramatic but I would remind you all, Hitler did not just happen, he was elected into power and then he used censorship to manipulate public opinion to support even greater repression of his opponents and eventually establish the horror, which was censored from the newsworthy diet of ordinary Germans.

One of the first actions is to silence opposition.

Such silencing requires censorship.

And whilst benign in terms of the damage it appears to do and whilst “sold” as being for the “common good” and to curtail what is ““offensive”, “objectionable” or “unsuitable for minors” (and other such fables) , censorship is the first step on a path which ends in an entirely different place…

I got a letter from Conroy because I objected to his censorship agenda. So I assume I am now on a government mailing list, somewhere.

“And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."