A follow up to our story December 30 on the Australian Government joining China is broadly censoring the internet. Now apparently if you believe in Free Speech you believe in Kiddie Porn, via the SMH:
“Labor makes no apologies to those who argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” [Telecommunications Minister Stephen] Conroy said yesterday. “If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree.”
No one equates freedom of speech with watching kiddie porn, only the Australian Government does.
Whilst no one would disagree with the notion that kidde porn is abhorrent, it should be noted that the Australian Government’s censorship regime is going to be much broader than sites that show activities that are already illegal to distribute and watch across the world. Further still, as local civil libertarians have pointed out, it will not only take all of two minutes to bypass the great firewall of Australia, and worse still it will actually provide a false sense of security to parents who will wrongly believe that the internet is now a safe place for their children, when it still isn’t.
At least they’ve now admitted to taking lessons from China, not that this is something to be proud of, although the Australian Government seems to think that it is.