CreateNSW is a NSW government agency that is supposed to promote creativity. But when one of the beneficiaries of a grant made through Screenworks, a charity CreateNSW supports, made a fairly pointed video about climate change, CreateNSW stepped in to demand it be taken off the Internet – in this case, taken off Facebook and removed from Instagram.
The matter of data centre security was raised recently on a network mailing list I subscribe to. Someone was wondering if data centres checked incoming equipment for “bad stuff” – explosives and what-not.
The reaction from some was “don’t talk about that, we don’t want to give people ideas”. What a muddle-headed response!
On the sixteenth of March 2014, the Sydney Morning Herald had an editorial calling for Government control of pornography on the Internet. You can read the editorial at the link below. This post is my response.
In this article about privacy, civil liberties and the way the “war on terror” has become a war on all of us, John Pilger asks “What are you going to do about it?”
Well, here’s my question, John: What can I do about it?
Continue reading
A discussion started on a network operators list I frequent, about a case where an apparently innocent party, Melbourne Free University, had had its website blocked. Aside from a terse “yes it’s blocked” from one provider concerned, no further information was forthcoming. Here’s one report about it. Continue reading
Kids interpret censorship as failure and route around it.
Karl Auer, August 2007
Government: We are taking ALL of your little green apples.
Victim: What?!? That’s so unfair! They are mine!
Government: Nope, we are taking them. All of them.
Victim: I shall go to the Press! To the High Court! To….
Government: Oh alright. We’ll only take HALF your little green apples.
Victim: Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you… I’m so grateful!
Government: You’re most welcome.
H L Mencken said “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.”
Censorship is just such a solution. It is invariably proposed by people who have not thought through what their “solution” really means. It is the equivalent of flinging a sheet over unsightly rubbish instead of disposing of it; it sort of works, but it won’t be long before serious flaws in the plan become apparent.