[LINK] Entertainment & tourism value of the ALP's Internet censorship regime

[Robin Whittle]

Lets say this vile thing comes to pass.

Direct access to the whole of the Link archives will be blocked, for
Australian users, due, in part, to my recent message which included:

  pass the bong

thereby inciting and instructing in matters of crime and drug use,
rendering the entire Link archive to be deemed to fall into the
"Refused Classification" classification.  (This concept alone is
almost endlessly amusing . . .)  See 2.1.c, 3.1.c and 4.1.c of
"National Classification Code":

http://www.comlaw.gov.au/comlaw/management.nsf/lookupindexpagesbyid/IP200508203?OpenDocument

There are probably hundreds of thousands or millions of sites which,
when properly considered, would also be deemed "RC".  In the fullness
of time, many of these will be added to the Official List.

There will be dozens of sites all over the world, with a reasonably
complete and constantly expanding public list of websites and
sections within websites which are Banned by the Australian government.

There will be competitions for who can find the most new sites banned
in the last month.  This will lead to a flurry of suggestions to
Authorities for new sites to add to the Official List - and to florid
complaints in public if such sites remain unblocked.

Everyone in the world outside Australia will be able to see the
public list and most of them will be able to look at any of the
banned sites.  Yet Australians will have to work around government
censorship barriers to see the sites and probably to read the list.
It is possible that such actions, or any service or software which
facilitates such actions, would be a criminal offence.

Therefore, any page which depicted such actions in a positive light
would, once detected, be added to the banned list.  This brings to
mind the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

There would be plenty of sites on the Official List which contain
largely non-RC material, which would nonetheless be deemed RC.  All
of these would be turning up in search results, with a snippet of
their contents - and there would be thousands of such sites which
show the Regime to be a crude and destructive approach to a falsely
conceived problem.

The enforcement of the ALP Internet Censorship Regime will provide a
whole new angle on overseas advertising campaigns for Australia as a
tourist destination:

  Come to our vast but quaint Republic / Antipodean Outpost
  of the Commonwealth  (recently decommissioned British Empire
  and before that a bunch of *Colonies*)!

  Come and meet, photograph and converse with Our People - who
  are protected from and generally unsullied by numerous
  depredations which abound on the dangerous, all-enveloping,
  *Internet*.

  Come to Australia, where innocence and purity are being
  preserved at the behest of the People, by the Government under
  the guidance of our Great, Loved and Celebrated Leader and her
  Patriotic Ministers!

  Come - and be Safe.


Maybe we should welcome this thing - to bring it out into the
sunshine, in public, for all the world to see.  To let it rot, bloat
and stink to high heaven, hopefully to the point of self-destruction
and to set an example for other governments who toy with such ideas.
 Also, to to give us something to laugh and sing about during the
coming GD-II (2nd Great Depression*).

In 2050, we will all be getting around with walking frames, and
telling the younger generation how we 'ad it tough in those dark
years.  They wouldn't believe us except for the Net archives.

  - Robin



*  See the last few months of posts at http://market-ticker.org and
   tell me if you can see a way out of it.