Wednesday 20 February 2008

Nanny knows best

Let it be known, once and for all: if a smart, computer-savvy 16 year old wants porn, no technical barrier will be able to stop him. This is a natural law, similar to the laws of gravity or thermodynamics.
Great quote and not a bad story either. The Australian government has spent A$85M on trying to create tools to filter the Internet. Of course this was doomed to failure and when a teenager cracked the filter in half an hour they might have got the message but now the Australian government has decided that ISPs should censor what they carry. The proposal is that those who want the unfiltered version will have to contact their ISP and request it.

Of course some countries routinely censor what their citizens can access on the web so Australia is hoping to join Iran, China, Syria, North Korea, Thailand and others in "protecting" their citizens but Amnesty International keep a site, Irrepressible.info, against web censorship and it's hard to see how Oz can avoid being added. Censorship is censorship.

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