12 replies to this topic

[marko]

At a time when there is a lot of talk about what is acceptable viewing on the net, it would appear the major ISP's here in the UK are beginning to offer parental controls to their customers which isn't a bad idea, but there is further talk from governments of blanket censorship to illegal sites such as warez and porn sites and other sites they consider to be either dangerous or grossly unacceptable.

Personally, I'd have no problem with the blocking of such sites, but there is a part of me that is suspicious and dubious of governments becoming involved in the censorship of websites.   I mean, the likes of YouTube for example, contains some pretty distasteful stuff and I hardly think any government would consider blocking them which throws the entire process into chaos!.

I think targetting illegal sites is particularly naive of the governments, sure, warez is big business and does harm the industry but are they really confident they can block these sites successfully?.   Wouldn't they be better targetting existing sites which are hugely popular and forcing them to comply with some form of acceptable standard, or are they just bumping their gums and have no idea what they are taking on?.

[PCRacer]

The internet is public domain, it belongs to no-one but the public.  

The governments should keep their hands to themselfs.  

[google]

no no no no no - absolutely and most certainly NOT - it would be a massive blow to the internet to have any government interfere with it

[jazee]

While I dont agree with a lot of content on the internet, I hardly think the governments are the best people to tackle the issue.   When I find something I dislike I dont return

[FreeWareFan]

I don't want someone to "listen" my traffic, not RIAA, not MPAA or other "crapy" organizations. Internet is my own space.
And ISP shouldn't give to third parties tracks any my activity.

[marko]

Realistically speaking, we're monitored right now, everything we do online is processed and logged and traceable right back to our IP address, unless of course we're using some form of anonymizer.   I've never seen the need for them personally, but those who are a little more aprehensive about the collection of such data would no doubt wish to use them.

My point is whether the government blocks access or monitors access, we'll almost always be accountable for our actions online.   In my many years in IT I've actually seen some shocking examples of sites we had to filter from corporate networks and it eventually got to the stage where we had to make a whitelist instead of a blacklist cause the blacklist just grew to epic proportions ... needless to say, there were a lot of unhappy users amongst the 30,000 or so we managed

[dstrout]

There are many reasons why the Internet should not be policed by any government. I'm only going to mention a few. The first is that the Internet is far too big a "place" to be successfully censored. For every one "bad" (more on that later) site that the government blocks, three more spring up in its place. Where would they even start? Thepiratebay? P**nhub? There will always be some site that a determined user can go to look at the stuff the government doesn't want them to see.

Second: since when is it the government's job to decide what we should and shouldn't see? Who will make the rules? P**n will probably be banned, and torrent sites, but once they take that away, what would be next? As marko said, YouTube is a possibility, but then what happens to all the partners who literally make their living making YouTube videos? And forget about just policing within YouTube - YouTube itself has proven nearly incapable of the job, with 48 hours of video uploaded to the site each minute. The government cannot be the one(s) who decide what's good for us.

Finally, anyone who is determined enough can get around these blocks. There are multitudes of ways to do this: simple proxies, tor, or more advanced ISP hacking. What is the point of blocking anything when anyone who wants to can bypass it? Perhaps then the government would start arresting those who try to dodge their blockades. From there - who knows.

Now you might get the idea from reading this that I am a porn addict who in my spare time downloads movies illegally online, and I don't want censorship because all that will have to end. But in fact, I feel that some censorship is a good thing. In my opinion, watching porn is a destructive habit, one that I tend to do my best to stay away from. Likewise, downloading movies is illegal and costs filmmakers money. Thus, I think they should be stopped. I just don't think the government should be the one to do that. Once they start censoring the Internet, the power will go to their head, and next it will be books, movies, newspapers, you name it. Censorship is the tool of totalitarian states, not free countries.

[google]

Great post dstrout, makes absolute sense to me

[James (Jim) Hillier]

I agree with everyone here, as most clear thinking, logical people would. The government here in Australia has been toying with the idea of internet censorship, the very proposition is abhorrent to me.

What is acceptable and what is not is all completely subjective. Nobody has the right to tell me what I should or should not be accessing and viewing based purely on their set of standards. It may well agree with my own doctrine but that is not the point, it's up to the individual to decide for themselves...not the government.

I can understand the Australian government's concerns where children are concerned BUT they cannot takeover the role of parent. They've done that already, in many areas, with disastrous effect. Censorship for children is a parental responsibility, if parents are found to be delinquent then charge and punish the parents!!!

As for illegal activities; well history has always dictated that adopting stricter measures tends to only make matters worse, encouraging a black market environment where the only winners are the criminal/gangster element.

Last but not least: Can governments ever get it right? NO!!! They literally stuff up anything and everything they get involved with, I say - hands off our internet!!

[innkeeper]

Governments need to stop being nursemaids and empower people to keep to the morals and laws of society. As far as the internet goes knowledge is power and ignorance is not bliss.