Julian DeMarchi, on OpenNIC mailing list
In protest to the great Australian Internet Filter I will be blacking out all my hosted websites on Australia Day [Jan 25th - 29th].
Warning: Illegal offset type in isset or empty in /var/www/crazycode.ws/wp-includes/query.php on line 1715
The Great Australian Blackout. Internet Censorship is a very, very bad thing. The fact that the Australian Leadership seems to be working so hard to tell us what we can and can not view is somewhat alarming to myself.
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. Basically, it is the notion that “knowledge must be based on knowledge”. The ability for humans to learn relevant facts and acquire an understanding of the way that knowledge is created is a very powerful asset to attain.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault created the concept of Power-knowledge.
Power is based on knowledge and makes use of knowledge; on the other hand, power reproduces knowledge by shaping it in accordance with its anonymous intentions. Power (re-) creates its own fields of exercise through knowledge.
It’s a scary thought that any body – let alone a government body would work so hard as to ensure that anyone did not have access to any human knowledge. Sure, the Australian government is saying that the Internet filter that they are putting in place is “just” going to be used to stop content that is already illegal. Well, thanks for the kind words.
We all know that once a law is put in place, it can sometimes take years to remove or modify laws that limit their citizens ability to create and perform tasks that could be beneficial to either themselves or their citizens. I am scared that once a filter has been put into place to allow the government to block other beneficial websites. Will the Australian Government go down the path of the Italians and one day force us to not visit The Pirate Bay? It’s possible. The justification that the famous torrent site is a haven for movie and music pirates sounds good when you first hear it, but what about all the other content on the site that is not protected by copyright laws? What about music that has been licensed under something like the Creative Commons or a technical reference manual for an open source product that is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License?
What will stop the Liberals in the future from blocking anti-Liberal blogs? Who will know when every site complaining about a block – has itself – been blocked?
Thanks for the offer Mr. Rudd and Mr. Conroy, but I can protect myself from all the nasty porn sites that are on the internet. I do have Firefox, and I do know where that blue “X” is on the top of my browser’s window border on both Linux, Windows and OS X.
Related posts:
Leave Your Response