Today the Australian government has confirmed plans to censor the Internet.

Censor the Internet? Forbid!

Well, before you began making comparisons with China and Iran, realize that there are a few distinct differences between the censorship that Australia is forcing upon its ISPs and the arbitrary Censorship that China mandates. Namely, in Australia you will have the ability to opt-out.

Lets Make Things Clear

The scheme is ostensibly designed to protect school children and other innocent bystanders from the “dangers” of the web, including pornography and other inappropriate content. Unfortunately, the report is not particularly clear about what “inappropriate” content really is.

That and not the censorship itself is the real flaw with systems like this.

While we can all stand behind the idea of keeping small children from being able to access pornography, and even here in the States we are fine with public libraries and schools putting blocks on the content that you are allowed to view, should we be equally comfortable with the idea of allowing the government to unilaterally decide what is inappropriate?

Is political dissent appropriate? Material containing blood and violence? Artistic nudes? Where do you draw the line between smut and information?

For any country that is considering filtering access to information, these are the questions that you have to ask and much more importantly, these are the questions that you need to be willing to answer with the force of conviction and the force of law. If you leave anything up to chance, you are leaving your laws open to abuse.

Web 2.0 Roundup

In a perfect world governments would leave censorship to the discretion of the content consumers, but unfortunately no one ever said we lived in a perfect world. At the very least Australia, instead of letting this law be a knee jerk reaction to public outcry, take the time to be absolutely certain that you are only screening what’s absolutely necessary.

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