LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: David Lloyd <lloy0076@senet.com.au>
  To  : Glen Turner , linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 14:42:42 +0930

Re: Australian Censorship

Glen:

> Passing the complexity onto the customer is in nobody's
> interest.

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. The Australian people have
for so long been isolated by the sea from so much of the rest of the
world. The moment that the Australian Government realises that we are no
longer isolated; that we can gather all types of information from all
over the world (including X rated) they decide that some of it is not
appropriate. 

> The scheme also excacerbates the problems with the right-wing
> morals of filter software authors.

This censorship is not aimed at protecting children. Children, once
again, serve as essentially defenceless hostages to hide the real
reason. I sincerely believe the real reason is to stop adults from
viewing X Rated material. It is quite interesting actually - I wonder
what the churches (eg the Roman Catholic Churches) would say if we
blocked out any site to do with the Roman Catholic church?

> A good example of the uselessness of the scheme is an organisation,
> such as a private hospital, that wants to access information on
> sexual assult counselling.

This is an excellent example. As a board member of the AIDS Council of
South Australia I am disheartened that it may come to pass that we are
not capable of providing information even on safe(r) sex on the
Internet. ACSA works with three broad communities: gay men, intravenous
drug users and sex workers. All of these groupings to some extent have
been isolated from our mainstream community. Getting information to them
is extremely difficult. The Internet is an excellent resource to allow
these people anonymously to find out information that might prevent the
transmission of HIV and all other blood borne diseases such as Hepatitis
(A, B & C). This saves lives; censorship gets rid of the supposedly bad
with the definite good.

David Lloyd
Councilor for the City of Mitcham
Board member of the AIDS Council of South Australia
List Manager of the Linux C Programming ListBot List

-- 
http://users.senet.com.au/~lloy0076/index.html (personal home page)
Subscribe to the linux c programming list: 
    mailto:linuxCprogramming-subscribe@listbot.com
    http://users.senet.com.au/~lloy0076/linux_c_programming/index.html

-- 
Check out the LinuxSA web pages at http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject