'The internet opened fresh avenue for free speech and the explosion of ideas. but in some countries loose talk is banned and many are punished for their ideas' Lisa Murray Reports. (MH 2006, p.1)
it was 10 years ago this declaration made. up to this minute, a lot of countries are experiencing restriction in freedom of speech. To name a few, Iran, China, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, and Syria. At worst, the governments of these countries will imprison their citizen with no hesitation, these people are convicted for online offences. It is also considered normal for these countries to apply filters so the internet users will not be capable of access the banned websites.
An extreme example is the way Chinese government filter the "so-called-offensive-words". if any of their 123 millions citizens look up for "offensive-keywords" such as "Tiananmen Square", "Taiwanese Independence", or "Falun Gong" they will be automatically directed to a host not found page or worse, their computer will freeze for 30 minutes.
This restriction of freedom of speech is surprisingly also occur in western countries, countries which usually boast about their liberalism. European countries, United States of America, even Australia.
In Australia, a legislation was introduced in 2000, this law serves to fine the owner of the websites up to A$27,500 a day if they refused to delete contents which are considered as inappropriate.
"No other comparable country has the internet censorship laws that we have, " Irene Graham (as cited in COMM 315 Reader.)
However, this irritating rule is not helpful in protecting children from pornography. Australian government instead of crafting rules to block pornography sites, offer free filters for home computer. The government of this multicultural country also do not respect the privacy of their citizens as the use of internet for surveillance (the excuse is, in order to prevent terrorism act :) ).
Thus, internet now is no longer a free zone for freedom of expression. But, it is now a panopticon prison building, without the building of course.
In response to this article, i am completely disagree with the way freedom of expression is restricted, especially the one that happen in Australia. i consider that it is ridiculous for the government to ban sites which they consider inappropriate but not ban those hardcore pornographic sites. whilst actually it is more important to limit the access to pornographic sites as these sites will destroy the innocence of childhood. a belief in my country is, children are like white blank pages of paper what is written in that paper is what they will be.
And using internet for surveillance in order to prevent terrorism? hahah.. that's just a silly excuse, i think Australian Government need to relax a bit, as their insecurities has already cause 1 victim in the past, Mohammed Haneef, an innocent doctor convicted as terrorist because the government think so =.=
Overall, if the people are restricted from speaking out their mind, then there is no need for governments to exist, after all i believe in the theory of democracy that everything governments do are for the welfare of community and without community there is no government. So, government should discontinue this act as their existence is actually depends on their citizens. if all the citizens united and want to overthrow the government.. they can ^.^ easily..., see : President Suharto from indonesia :D
