[LINK] QUT Prof: 'Co-regulation key to safer internet'

[David Boxall]

On 7/03/2012 9:26 AM, Roger Clarke wrote:
> ... filtering could be used as one method of
> preventing access to particularly 'abhorrent' material on the
> internet.
> ...
OK, now I'm going to open myself up to all sorts of accusations. Why do 
we want to _prevent access_ to such material?

In the early 1990s, I accessed child porn. It wasn't accidental; I went 
looking. I went looking because I didn't believe. What I found shocked 
me from my comfortable complacency. By all reports, there was worse 
material available then, and still worse now.

An adult has responsibilities to protect children from abhorrent truths. 
Do adults benefit from being kept in similar ignorance?

I'd certainly be happier not knowing what I do, but would I be better?

...
> "We don't see the internet as a kind of sacred realm that is
> fundamentally at odds with other media."
Sacred, no. Is it the same?

Filtering is censorship. Censorship is irresistible to the authoritarian 
mindset.

To me, the only real reason for filtering is to keep the majority of the 
population ignorant of the full horrors. To permit a greater number of 
monsters to commit their atrocities, unbeknownst to the general populace.

-- 
David Boxall                         | ignorance more frequently
                                     | begets confidence than does
http://david.boxall.id.au            | knowledge
                                     | --Charles Darwin (introduction
                                     |  to 'The Descent of Man' 1871)