Let's face it - despite our revulsion at the paedophiles we should surely be aware that paedophilia is *always* the thin end of the wedge to Internet censorship. We need to acknowledge that the authorities will block child porn and related materials because no-one will seriously defend the rights of paedophiles to view kiddie porn and engage in the abuse of kids. What we must be aware of is this: the authorities will *always* use the least-defensible demographic (paedophiles, "terrorists", etc.) to firstly test the strategy they are looking to deploy and secondly as the scapegoat against which to compare all of those who resists any subsequent deployment of said strategy.
The demonization of paedophiles will almost always presage the deployment of strategies that demonize so-called "terrorists" who are always more difficult to pin down precisely, but nonetheless sound threatening, thereby clearing the space for the deployment of a further notching up of the restraints on more common freedom. Statistically, both paedophilia and terrorism are minor occurrences. Let's face it. If the government (or whoever - corporations, the military - that lays the ground-work for pro-capitalist corporate identities to take root within) forbids both the lowest of the low and the most threatening to us all, claiming that to protect us against Them requires us to restrict all of our hitherto enjoyed "freedoms" in the name of "preserving [our own] freedom", we who are not completely brain-addled must surely know that the government/ corporate interest, etc., actually wants the polar opposite of its communicated intent. All of this is absolute and unadulterated bollocks ... and yet, all around us, the media, the "opposition" government, our "representatives", each sell us and the world of which we are but one form of expression out, as if it is they who get to define the way the world works and should be run, versusu the views of so very many here, that the world does not belong to us ... that while we are the most influential as a consequence of our developed mechanically augmented capacity, we do not own the world. We do not acquire auto-matic superiority of the world, and deign to speak on behalf of all living things.

Why is this so difficult to be at the core of the world views which both restrain and motivate those who claim to lead "us". This is, I think that we can each agree, merely an expression of their arrogance and out-and-out bullshit. Do we not have an ethical responsibility to say, in typical English fashion, "NOw wait here, just a minute ..."?

We don't have too much time as far as I can assess (rightly, or wrongly) before this die is cast and the work of reversing the construction of political "reality" becomes that much more difficult, to let our values be known, to provide a counter-balance (might one hope fr an antidote?) to the dominant discourses that shape the common frames of reference that shape, inform, and restrain the narratives of meaning and lived expression of us, the ordinary folk, at our ordinary domain,replete with trying to work our own ways through life, as best as we can, trying to do as well as we can according to the values of the culture we live within.

We who give a damn must find a compelling and easy-to-cite argument that counters the official "Boogey Man" argument the authorities offer with which to justify a specific course of action that inevitably involves filtering all of us in order to capture the numerical minority. This, as we all know, gives the authorities far too much control, whilst appealing to the basest of Middle England's fears.

The burden of proof must be made to rest with the authorities who want to impose such "guilty-before-innocent" aspersions to the common citizen. Until the state can prove that we, the citizens, are automatically guilty ipso facto, then the state must back off and recognise that it works for the tax payer, the voter, the much-beloved "ordinary law-abiding person" that the Daily Mail so loves, rather than the other way around.

In short: fuck off and justify your existence as the recipient of the salary that I, as a tax payer, provide for you.

I tried to post a full copy and paste version of this article to a Google newsgroup and it didn't go. So instead I posted the URL of this news item instead and that went.

Perhaps Google has just been having a bad day.

Some net stuff should get censored but the real question is how do you police the censor?

Fod

A hugely emotive issue of course. But I've yet to see or hear of any evidence that cleanfeed is being used to hide anything other than child porn.

If a Western government, agency or corporation wishes to remove material from the web, pressure will be exerted on the hosting ISP - viz Richard Tomlinson and Craig Murray's blogs. It's not done like it is in China.

While I can well believe that there were some serious cock-ups and life-destroying situations as a result of Operation Ore, the tone of some of the Ore Investigation sites is also dubious - apologists for the (clearly exploitative of children) child modelling sites and seemingly a refusal to believe that child pornography exists and ruins childrens' lives.

So I'm taking this post with a very large pinch of salt...and need to go for a wash now as this all feels very grimy and murky.

that blocking child porn content is just a falacious pretext to put the filtering capability in place.

Because if you identify child porn sites, you take them down pronto and arrest the people running them, no ?

In contrast, what means blocking child porn sites ?

Does it mean blocking them for the general population so that it does look clean while perverts in the elite can still enjoy them ?