Cav's Place

I first wrote about Australia’s Internet censorship plans about a year ago. Unfortunately, I find myself needing to mention this issue once again today, because it really looks like those plans are about to be implemented, regardless of the criticism.
How many other “Great Firewalls” will be created in the near future, once a country that received a perfect 10.00 for civil liberties in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy and a perfect 1 in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Index will create its own? Dare we risk allowing even the idea to pass? Will we be able to turn things around once it does? I doubt it…

I don’t really feel like reiterating all I wrote a year ago, so you may want to read that post if you want a more detailed opinion regarding this particular issue. But the general problem is that banning content that is illegal or can’t be rated paves the way towards forbidding people from challenging or even discussing any law or issue, such as euthanasia, which is being given as an example because it actually seems to already be covered under this law. No matter how they try to justify it, censorship is censorship and that’s where it leads, especially when it’s worded to allow such an interpretation from the very beginning.
The point is that the Internet must be free, allowing anyone to post any content they choose, as long as they don’t try to trick others into believing it’s something else, and also allowing anyone to view and use any public content they choose. Any laws and regulations that infringe this definition of the freedom of the Internet are harmful and must not be allowed to pass.
Actually, there seems to be something called the Freedom on the Net Index, which could help in the future. Right now it seems to be only a test, since so few countries have been analyzed, but even so it’s obvious that Internet use is already restricted to a certain degree everywhere. But maybe it’s not quite too late already…