Clean Feed

I frankly have no kind words for this idea of a 'clean feed' for Australian internet services. Censorship in any form no matter how little or insignificant is a severe hindrance to free speech, free expression and freedom in general. While I realize the intention of the clean feed is to block inappropriate websites that contain things such as child pornography, which is great and all, but it's a case of where do you draw the line on what is inappropriate? Good intentions aside, by allowing the foundations for such censorship to be put in place you're allowing the idea of inappropriateness to be interpreted to the whim of whoever is in control. What's to say that a certain media source that is only available on the internet that manages to break through the government's media black outs becomes declared 'inappropriate'? You could go as far to seeing it in a Orwellian perspective.

There is some awful shit on the internet, no denying it. But that's the charm of it. No matter how disturbed, immoral or heinous it may be. It's there, you can look at it if you hate yourself that much. There's no gun to your temple forcing you to look at it, you're doing it because you want to. Why do the government want to remove this very basic freedom? Our ability to decide.

I realize it's mostly 'think of the children!!!' that's fueling this bandwagon but seriously. If a kid wants to see something they'll find a way no matter what, it's up to the parents to make sure they don't see it. This is the responsibility that goes with being a parent. There's far too much focus on the fact that sex, nudity, drugs and violence turns children into killer heroin sex addicts. While I'm not saying that every five year old should watch American History X(or even Romper Stomper) before nap time, there's just far too much focus on such things lately. When a twelve year old can't perceive the difference between reality and whats on a screen, the kids got a lot more problem than just watching too many violent movies.

Back to the clean feed. Even from a technical stand point, which is something noted by nearly every ISP in Australia, that while the clean feed is very well possible; it'd destroy performance and be a royal pain in the arse to setup. Now I don't know about you but I think Australia's internet is bad enough, we're equal to a third world country for god's sake. Our Asian neighbours have internet 50 times faster internet than we do, not to mention no goddamn download limits!