Confessions of a net libertarian
December 27th, 2008 | by kilps |
From Andréia on Flickr, licensed by CC Attribution 2.0 Generic
The New York Timses has a great summary of the mess that is the Australian internet censorship proposal.What interested me most is the following:
But ethics professor Clive Hamilton, in a column on the popular Australian Web site Crikey.com, scoffed at what he called ”Net libertarians,” who believe freedom of speech is more important than limiting what children can access online.
”The Internet has dramatically changed what children can see,” said the professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, noting that ”a few extra clicks of a mouse” could open sites with photos or videos of extreme or violent sex. ”Opponents of ISP filters simply refuse to acknowledge or trivialize the extent of the social problem.”
So I went to find the said article – and here it is. He makes an interesting point about double standards – but not a particularly good one. Centralised control of internet content is different from the rating of movies shown in a cinema. That’s all there really is to it – and this Internet Libertarian desperately hopes that nothing like this ever comes near our shores.
