Response to lecture 7

"Oh won't somebody please think of the children!"... I bet you can hear Helen Lovejoys voice in your head right now.

In today's lecture the concept of government filtering content was introduced. From an idealised perspective protecting children's innocent eyes from the evils of pornography seems to be a noble pursuit. But as was discussed in the lecture, if censorship of content is introduced in any capacity where does it end?. If the government was to filter content they deem 'inappropriate' are they not filtering our rights as adults to view content that via any other media we are allowed to view. And if a filtering system was to be introduced to our Australian Internet system, blocking pornography, removing our rights to view pornography, what is to stop the government 'filtering' any other content they perceive as inappropriate? What if anti-government content was perceived to be inappropriate? What if any content from an opposing political party was deemed inappropriate for citizens to view. Any internet content filtering system would censor not only content but our rights. If the government, religious groups, parents and Helen Lovejoy are concerned about what children are viewing on the Internet then there needs to be more parental involvement in childrens Internet usage. Don't want your child looking at porn, or sites on how to construct bombs? Than don't let your child use the Internet unsupervised (or have access to large amounts of fertilizer), censoring my rights as an Australian is not the answer to your problem.




*** Essay update! I am starting to majorly struggle with the concept of copyright, the concepts here are either so abstract or so overly specific that you do not imply to the general concept of what copyright is. There is also so many years of history to review :/ copyright you are starting to wear on my last nerve! On the plus side I have found some good case examples for creative commons!
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/OER_Case_Studies