Questions And Answers Continued

Read the lecture and the readings, pursue a couple of the topics that you find most interesting and then post your blog with your well-considered thoughts about the theory and practice of politics.
Did a rough post about the lecture afterwards but I'll do a more in depth one now...
I did note three things that interested me so I'll blog about them...
They were
-Movie "The Conversation"


-William Gibson Burning Chrome
I downloaded this one and was about to print it when i realised it was 200 pages long! Not that i mind reading that much but Im sorry my ink budget does not stretch that far! I printed the last 10 or so pages and it was brilliant!
I'm not too keen on reading off a computer screen but for this i will! I simply loved it! It was the best 10 pages I've read in a very long time!! And I fully urge everyone to read it!

-Reading Allegory of Plato's Cave
I downloaded this off learning at griffith last night and read it on my way to uni... It was crazy! it absolutely blew me away! Who thinks about that kind of stuff! I think the copy I downloaded was like summary version of the actual "Allegory of Plato's Cave" but even it was amazing to read. Not sure if I would be able to completely grasp the full version but I would definetly be interested to try...
Now the politics part...

Adam asks:
What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the Internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???
I was pretty naive on this topic, so i did a bit of research in order to understand fully what the question was asking.
The following info i got off an American website. I thought it was interesting and maybe an insight into whats to come for Australia? Perhaps?
One website claimed that Google has started filtering their information. By failing to list links to sites that contain certain information about the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda and political scandals. America Online (AOL) , Yahoo and Microsoft are also involved in this use of censorship.

AOL was allegedly involved with the Bush administration and the FBI in censoring emails. Apparently unaware AOL Email users are bound by a clause that allows all emails to be scanned, filtered and non-delivered if contents are considered to be inappropriate.

"...censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses."

In Australia a new policy of mandatory Internet filtering was introduced in 2008, but is yet to come into force. The Labor party is unable to get enough support to enforce this new policy and has been faced with much opposition against the idea.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) has a blacklist of sites which would be filtered if the Censorship policy comes into play.

Only half of the 2395 website listed were child pornography. The other half included online gambling sites, YouTube pages, pornography (gay,straight and fetish), euthanasia, and many religious websites.

Now for my opinion?
I'm really stuck on this one because it think it has potential to be a good thing, but challenges the idea of free speech and the concept of governments controlling people. I'm definitely for the idea of filtering the net of all child porn, filtering emails in order to maintain border security and keeping convicted criminals out of trouble, but is there a way to do these things without hindering freedom of speech? Can we censor Al Qaeda websites without restricting peoples rights for information and rights to practice their religion?

I think one of the great things about the modern world is how accessible information is. So is this Internet censorship a step back in history? To the days when only the rich and powerful had unrestricted access to the news and current affairs? Perhaps?

I really don't think I've made much of a difference in this discussion as I'm really stuck on how it would be best to approach this...

What place does censorship have in a democracy?
This I know about! Year 12 Advanced English we studied the media and its ability to "spin" the truth and influence their audiences. Influencing peoples views on the government, politicians and current affairs can even go as far as affecting the outcome of elections and major court cases.

We studied the popular TV show "Front line" which depicts the media's ability to censor and spin the news and current affairs. Below is a short clip from an episode.



I also did an in depth study of the Internet delivered short film called "Spin" by Brian Springer