blue ribbon campaign
- it's not over yet -

'Good god' you're thinking to yourself, 'are people still on about this Blue Ribbon crap? Wasn't the CDA defeated years ago?'. Yep, but its successors are always coming along. Take a look at the interview section - you could be prevented from reading all the magazine interviews, on the grounds that they have naughty words in them (you know, the ones you learnt in the playground when you were five). All in the name of 'protecting the children'.

Well, censorship (in my opinion) should be a personal thing. You wouldn't leave your kids alone with a TV with all the cable channels descrambled, would you? Well, the internet is the same - except you have to scramble the porno 'channels' yourself, either by being with the kids when they're on the net, or by installing one of the 'cybersitter' type programs. Why should freedom of expression be curbed because some politician wants to inflict his extreme 'Christian' right-wing idea of decency on everybody using the internet?

The stuff that is illegal to display now (eg underage porn, libellous comments, trademark infringements) will stay illegal, and people will still display them (and, probably, more of them will get busted, which is the risk they take).

The internet will, eventually, censor itself; browsers will become sophisticated enough to be able to filter out material unsuitable for its audience, and websites will rate themselves (or be rated, on a fixed scale maintained by an independent body).

However, we will never get to that point if ISPs are held legally responsible for all material stored on their servers, or whatever new bizarre loophole they come up with for destroying the spirit of freedom that is unique to the internet. Remember, the WWW is still young - only six years old, still running around being naughty :)

Hopefully, it is already so enormous that it is impossible for an external body to regulate - busting every ISP in the US would be a pretty damn big job, but scaring them into complying would be a more simple matter entirely.

I'll get off my soapbox now, but if you've got this far, just be aware that there are important men and women in important places who, for one reason or another, have an agenda to 'sanitize' the net, on their terms.

For more info, wander over to the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

All opinions expressed are mine. By the way, even this page could be censored (see if you can spot why).