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Australia Censoring the Internet: mortgaging a nation’s future

At heart, I’m a libertarian: I am firm in my belief that the ills that accompany unfettered access to self-expression and communication are outweighed by the benefits - that the abdication of personal responsibility that seems endemic in our society is a call to community action and education - not an invitation to governments to censor and regulate.

Sadly, those of similar mind are under constant attack; for example, Australia has announced that default censorship of the Internet is coming. At issue are the children who’s parents are no longer deemed capable of seeing to their memetic welfare; instead, the entire nation must bear the cost for their inattention.

As often happens, it seems the Australian government has seized upon a media-manufactured social ill as an excuse to strengthen its powers. The TechCrunch post linked-to above suggests scary motives afoot - that broad filtering is a prelude to future crackdowns against bloggers, policy criticism, and free speech. While that may one day be the case, such conspiracy theories give governments too much credit for forethought. Apply Occam’s razor, and you get a much more utilitarian explanation: like most populations, governments expand when and where they can - purely by virtue of existing. An educated, activist citizenry is tasked with playing the role of antibody and containing their legislative spread. Witness the recent Canadian reaction to music industry sponsored legislation.

Where then are the Australians?

The Australian government has lulled its population by coating its plan in a beguiling, saccharine layer of moral virtue - after all, who doesn’t want to protect the children? (Parents, evidently.) And, criticism has been headed off with an exit clause: those not wishing to see the government’s interpretation of the world may be able to opt-out of the censored view, though the monetary and social cost of that choice are unknown. Wrapping an indecent proposal in a layer of barely acceptable plausibility: a method for selling used cars, not national leadership.

And so continues the slow slide into nanny state societies and the stunning willingness to trade freedom for security (or corporate profit) that has characterized the first decade of the new millennium. Parents are saved from taking responsibility for their children by a government willing to mortgage its citizen’s future.

australia censorship

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AT&T Censored Anti-Bush Lyrics in Pearl Jam Show

GigaOm tells the tale - AT&T’s admittedly overzealous censor removed anti-Bush lyrics. Overzealous?? How about criminal? What sort of half-wit would think that criticizing Bush was worthy of censorship? I hate to think like the tinfoil hat crew, but I have trouble imagining anyone censoring that without explicit instructions to do. We already know that AT&T is willing to do pretty much anything to curry favour with powerful political organizations (see: AT&T scanning your internet connection for copyrighted material).

For crying out loud. Americans, this is your country, and your losing it.

at&t, censorship pearljam

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AT&T Protest Graphic for your blog, website, whatever

AT&T is stumbling through the Internet age with a stunning lack of foresight: in support of their TV offering, and to make friends with Hollywood, they’ve agreed to work towards actively scanning all AT&T network traffic for copywritten material.

I’m not going to go into the details. CenterNetworks, Uneasy Silence, Dave Winer, Techcrunch, Ars Technica, AllThingsDigital, and others have covered it exhaustively already.

I will, however, contribute a protest button/graphic/badge. Right-click & Save As, and deploy on your blog/website/tshirt/etc as you see fit. Link it back to whatever post, petition, goatse picture, or whatever you choose. Please don’t hotlink. Its a friendly png of 14kb in size, with a popular pop-culture reference to make it extra topical.

UPDATE: I took it down until I can figure out if the AT&T corporate logo can be used for critical purposes under the “fair use” clause without first seeking permission. I am a legal chicken-shit, yes.

UPDATE 2: What do you say - would it be covered under nominative use?

UPDATE 3: Removed literal trademark elements while retaining visual cues and tagline syntax. Should be legal, IMHO.

at&t, att, business models, censorship, copyright, copywrite, mpaa, protest, RIAA, security techmeme

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Censorship Nation

I just wanted to point out that Boing Boing is banned on Boston muni-fi stations. Gizmodo asks if they are in the US or China.

Ok - fine, Boston uses some keyword parsing auto-censoring system, and given BoingBoing’s diverse subject matter, it tripped the filter - this is hardly punishement for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force thing, or some right-wing conspiracy against the libertarian blogosphere, or some totalitarian Bush-led junta, or whatever.

That being said: It seems alarming when “protect the children” is used to justify censorship of any kind, much less automated, unsupervised, algorithmic censorship of the entire internet.

boingboing, boston censorship

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