In a humanist and thoughtful way, I don't care what you do with the internet. And that's the way it should be.
(Try not to organise pogroms, jihads, paedophilia rings, or any other life threatening stuff, and we should get along just fine... but I suspect the fans of that kind of gear would do that - Clean Feed, or no Clean Feed.)
Other people should care about what you do with the internet as much as they should care about what you do in your closet/cupboard/bedroom/toilet.
One of the things that so many Australians felt some real hope about at the close of the Howard Era (or the Dark Age of Oz) was that it was time to open out and breathe again. It was time to stop the reactionary, conservative fear mongering. To stop the faux moral panics. Time to end the politics of division and have a crack at behaving like we're all not slavering idiots, hell bent on each others' costly and untimely demise.
I should state my leaning before going on. I'm not overly impressed by my new government either. I already feel let down. I was always going to be disappointed, I knew that. But I'm sad at how little time it took. I became faintly suspicious about three months before the election. There's a worrying amount of tight lipped control from Plastic Man, and precious little real movement on things of any consequence.
Back to censorship: the fact that Kev so unthinkingly waded in on Bill Henson should have been a cause for national embarrassment. I'm not a fan of Bill's work either, but I'm not a fan on aesthetic grounds. Let's try and keep our heads and stop handing over more and more control to the least deserving people - the ones who crave it.
If you are under any illusions as to how bad it got under Howard, I recommend you pick up the Quarterly Essay # 26, 2007. His Master's Voice - The Corruption of Public Debate Under Howard, by David Marr.
It's a nauseating ride into an Orwellian vision, and you know what? It wasn't fiction and it wasn't East Germany. For my money, not enough has been changed, repealed or deemed as crap behaviour, in the maintenance of a free press and free public debate, since Howard's long overdue exit. This preposterous 'Clean Feed' garbage being peddled by the current government is more of that. Click on the icon above if you want to find out more and do something about it.
A Grey Area will return to the regularly scheduled pap and sillyness, just as soon as possible.
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