Hypocratic Government seeks to censor Australian Internet

The Age (2008) has label Kevin Rudd as a hypocritical leader as a year prior to the Beijing Olympics he reprimanded Chinese Authorities for a block on the internet. Rudd expressed his frustration by stating that "They should have nothing to fear by open digital links with the rest of the world during this important international celebration of sport." A year on, Rudd is attempting to implement similar standards on Democratic Australia, by blocking certain websites that the government deems as inappropriate.

What's your take on this? How would you feel if you could not freely surf the internet? What if you could not tweet on twitter or update your status on facebook? Do you feel that your human rights are being trampled on?

Australia- the next totalitarian society?

As the World Wide Web is not owned by a single organization, it is quite difficult to answer the simple question: 'how many websites are there’? After a number of calculations, Boutell.com states, that as of February 2007, there were 29.7 billion pages on the World Wide Web. Netcraft believes that '46 million websites were added to the Internet between January and April 2009'. These staggering figures show that more and more individuals are keen to generate and distribute information.

In the technologically advancing 21st Century, an abundance of this information is being distributed via social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. This, once unconventional way of news reporting, has now become a nifty tool which in many cases has outdone the mainstream news outlets. For instance, The Age (2009) reported that social networking sites were used during the Victorian Bushfires in 2008 as an ‘innovative online mapping tool to assess the risk of fires reaching peoples homes’. This notion comes to show that the World Wide Web is a fantastic way to share information.

So if the internet is such a resourceful tool, why is the Rudd government attempting to censor unlawful words, images, videos or even music?  While trying to protect children from sexual predators, as it has been said that parents fear that predators pose as minors on social networking sites, an article in The Boston Globe (2008) states that ‘it is not the Governments job to determine which ideas are harmful’. In defense, I totally agree! As an adolescent, in all honesty I can see eye to eye with many other individuals my age- ‘rules are meant to be broken’. Censor these particular websites and we will find ways around things! Furthermore, by censoring specific pages, does Rudd not see that billions of other pages could be destroyed, pages with content that can be ‘deemed as non-harmful?’

What happened to Australia- the democratic nation? Has it not occurred to the Australian government that they are rebuffing their citizens of basic fundamental human rights?
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

If the Australian government feels that it’s ok to use social networking sights in time of disaster (such as the Bush Fires noted above), why censor the internet- declining its citizens of ‘receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media!’

Do you feel that the Australia is becoming a totalitarian state- one where government has complete control?