That’s a great article Anthony… nice work. Very well argued. Great to see a Christian standing up with a logical, fact-based argument and demonstrating that not all Christians should be lumped into the same group as “conservative Christians”.

P.S. I’m reminded by what I wrote above that the word “conservative” is so fraught with misinterpretation. It should literally mean cautious and opposed to unneccessary change. But in practice, it represents a broad group of people ranging from those who are merely cautious all the way through to bigoted, ill-informed, greedy, fearful “Chicken Little”, ego-centric, concrete types. I think the world needs a greater variety of words in common use to describe this spectrum of people…!

Hi Jeremy

Thanks for your comment. I don’t believe I have made an error. I didn’t suggest that the blacklist that was leaked by Wikileaks was reviewed by the OFLC. The point I was making was that any blacklist that is distributed to ISPs for enforcement would be leaked.

Also, comments made by Senator Conroy and other government representatives have made it clear that their net will be far broader than child pornography.

Regards
Anthony Caruana

Jeremy - you asked “What RC material do you think Christians should have access to?”

I don’t think that I can answer that question. However, I will say this. It’s clear that the Bible calls us to live a Godly life. My personal view is that regardless of any government’s content management regime it’s up to Christians to manage their own content consumption. For example, the TV show Californication has received lots of attention. It’s been deemed to be acceptable for broadcast. Would you watch it?

With regards to the OFLC blocking anti-abortion material. I don’t have specific evidence in hand. However, many independent, reasonable people have grave concerns about what could be blocked.

Thanks for your feedback

Fantastic post.  It is my deeply held belief that the people of faith of this country (Christians such as ourselves and all other faiths) need to make an INFORMED decision on this mandatory filtering policy.  Simply trusting that it will “protect the children” is not only incorrect, but dangerous, as well as worrying as to what else will be blocked other than illegal content.

Senator Conroy has already requested of Google that they carry out the same censorship methods employed in China and Thailand.  Australians live in a democratic society in that we choose what is appropriate and the Government acts upon that, not the other way around.

Keep up the good work, I’m so glad to hear another Christian taking up the cause.

There are a number of problems with the way that the proposed legislation has been publicised, not mentioned in your article.  One is that, because at present the proposed URL blocklist is only for RC material, it does nothing to block most of the websites that I, for one, would not like my children to see.  So all the publicity about `protecting children’ is just fluff.

For another thing, the proposed legislation if implemented will be ineffective at preventing RC material from being viewed in Australia.  Anyone who wants to view it, will be able trivially to circumvent the block.

So what does the blocking achieve?  As far as I can tell, it will:

• marginally reduce the likelihood of stumbling upon RC material inadvertently
• slow down access to some sites (e.g., YouTube) that contain both RC material and other material
• Put a mechanism in place that allows the government and other bodies to block various bits of content without telling anyone
• Increase the cost of running an ISP, and
• Make it look as if the government is doing something.

Is this what we really want?