You’re right, China is a bad example to use here because they go beyond anything which could even be debated as reasonable in probably all western democracies. However, once you get on the honest to goodness censorship path, my feeling is that it gets steep and slippery.

It’s not made explicit in the post, but if you read it again you’ll note that I don’t advocate doing nothing about illegal activity on the internet. In fact, I think internet filtering and censorship does have its place, but it should not be compulsorily performed at a central point (i.e. by the Government or by ISPs on behalf of the government).

More than that, it’s definitely important to have mechanisms in place to allow authorities to easily investigate illegal activity being assisted by the internet. For example, the incident I mentioned in Hyde Park; while Facebook (or whatever technology) might have been used to organise some physical world illegal activity, they shouldn’t be held accountable for that. However, there are very good reasons why the police should have the ability to access records of the system which are relevant to the organisation of illegal activities. This would be no different to the current situation with the telephone. A technology, that when first introduced, made the organisation of illegal activity much easier, and opened up new kinds of illegal activity (phone scams still aren’t uncommon). Just as the internet shouldn’t be, interactions we have over the telephone aren’t censored, however the authorities can access our records should we choose to use the telephone for bad purposes.

I hope that clarifies my thoughts.

Yep, very slly question. Yet ever again I read that Australia should not have ANY censorship applied to the Internet, because a group of bone-head, neanderthal meglomaniac despots in China have gone completely overboard with it?

Where is the balance in this discussion folks, that you all seem to want to have in the handling of the Internet usage? What about quoting the fair, reasonable and well planned checks and balances that oher countries are applying to Internet usage so that it can continue to grow and be the boon it should be for everyone??

You roll out in front of me the perfect Internet system of any kind, especially the perfect Internet security system of any kind, and I will then agree with you that Internet censorship have have the same hazy and lofty standards applied… NOTHING in this technology is perfect, and it is a fool’s dream to demand that of any Internet related technology before you would accept it. You would have to turn it off today.

And I do know folks, I have been working with Internet security since 1995…

This is all about IMPROVEMENT of conditions, not idiotic demands for perfection. This blog alone could be hacked in 2 minutes by good operators, your bank accts are not too far behind… (takes longer to get at those)

Your house is more insecure than that…

Let’s put some REAL and basic protections in place to regulate a LARGE PORTION of the unsuitable materials and the ILLEGAL STUFF, just like we do in the rest of society in FREE COUNTRIES.

Sheesh, what is so dang hard about that? The technology is available today, and millions of organisations globally use it today. They have neither gone broke or lost their Internet usage…