[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [ProgSoc] Time for a letter to your local rep?
On 01/01/2008, at 7:26 PM, John Elliot wrote:
That is, how can you describe why this is a highly undesirable
course of action?
You're right that it's difficult, but in no way should that stop me
from caring or trying to lobby against it. We'd all be foolish to sit
back and chill to avoid being labelled child-pornography apologists,
despite what Conroy says.
In reading about this rehashed circa-1996 proposal (originally
proposed by the ALP), I stumbled across a new word in Swedish;
"ändamålsglidning". Roughly, it translates to "sliding purpose" and
was used to describe the situation in Sweden (the Scandanavian
country mentioned by Conroy) whereby the Swedish government supplies
a URL list to ISPs who are then encouraged to block requests to those
URLs to mitigate the risk of exposing children to child pornography
and violence.
Why "sliding purpose"? As you can imagine, it didn't take long before
the government started slipping the URLs of filesharing websites onto
the ban list. The situation is similar in the UK (4Chan, anyone?),
which was also mentioned.
Ros' put it nicely when I told her about it:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -- Benjamin
Franklin
But I don't need to tell you this. You already understand what I'm
talking about, why this is bad &c. It does strike me as strange that
you have an "I don't care" or "It's not worth it" attitude about
this, or perhaps you're just yanking my chain and seeing what I'll
do. My guess is, most people (truly) won't give a damn for the same
reason those very same people roam the streets of London under 25
hour surveillance.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what happens. Best case, it
gets turned into an optional, transparent system whereby ISPs &
parents opt in after weighing up the pros and cons (i.e. business
casing & parenting respectively). Worst case, we become a nanny state
much like we've already become a welfare state.
Cheers,
--
Nathan de Vries
-
You are subscribed to the progsoc mailing list. To unsubscribe, send a
message containing "unsubscribe" to progsoc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
If you are having trouble, ask owner-progsoc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx for help.