For those who have been living under a rock (i.e. not checking reddit) recently, the government here in Straya is planning to censor our internet access in a clumsy stunt aimed at cornering the “think-of-the-children!” vote. Veteran lefty Clive Hamilton’s defence of the filter, however, is no tabloid hack job: although he couldn’t resist including some choice examples of porn site copywriting, the worst spectre he bothers conjuring is “evidence” that “indicates” some porn-hound boys may develop “perverse attitudes towards girls, such as being disgusted by pubic hair.” Gasp.
Indeed, with such slim pickings for the knee-jerk moralists, it’s hard to figure out exactly who Hamilton is trying to convince. The thrust of his argument seems to be that the selfish libertarians who want the internet to stay free should not be allowed to get in the way of parents who “club together and decide that it is too difficult or untenable for them to protect children by themselves and want their governments to help them”. Exactly why the parents needs the government’s help is never made clear – even if they really are incapable of monitoring their children, in itself a strange assumption, why do they need the government’s help to do so, and why should it involve intruding upon the private lives of all Australians? If they are already clubbing together, why can’t they solve this “problem” on the level of civil society and voluntary participation, leaving the rest of us out of it? Particularly perplexing is this oxymoronic declaration:
[Parents] don’t want to be the household spy and policeman, forever looking over their children’s shoulders or checking to see what they have downloaded on their mobile phones. They want governments to help them.
A word to the wise, Mr. Hamilton: when your opponents are accusing you of authoritarianism, it’s best not to associate the words ‘household spy and policeman’ with ‘government’ in your response. Is he really suggesting that most Australian parents hold a deep desire for governments to take over an aspect of parenting – guiding the child’s media consumption – that requires enormous trust, discretion and communication with the child? And why on earth did he couch this assertion in words that make the police-state overtones of the censorship plan so explicit?
Hamilton’s piece descends almost into self-parody with this brazen admission:
I have deliberately not considered the question of whether it is feasible to effectively filter extreme and violent pornography on the internet.
Why not? Because, of course,
We need a community debate on the question of whether we should do it before we consider the question of whether we can do it because too many internet libertarians and industry spokespeople cover up their refusal to countenance any sort of regulation by insisting that it won’t work.
That’s right: we need to decide that something should be done before asking whether it is possible, in order to prove that the reality-based nay-sayers were only saying it was impossible in the first place because they thought it shouldn’t be done. Where does the (incredibly well-evidenced) fact that it really can’t be done fit into this decision-making rubric? Nowhere. Catch-22.
I can’t even tell who is trying to convince who of what anymore in this bizarre and scary debacle. I just want my usually sane and reasonably free country to give itself a good kick up the arse and close the book on internet censorship for good.
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