[clug] OT: Protesting the proposed clean feed?

[Lana Brindley]

2008/10/25 steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au>

> Sunnz wrote on 25/10/08 5:51 PM:
>
> > So the internet is really an abstraction of an information portal, the
> > very fundamental idea of the internet is that it is borderless
>
>
> <snip>
>
> Explaining what the Internet *is* and *is not* is very simple.
>
> It's another Dimension (as in SciFi).
>
> Really.
>
> It's Cyberspace.
> It touches physical space and becomes 'material' or 'observable' at
> servers and clients (eg. web-browers, mail-readers).
> Perhaps routers and links too.
>
> Ask any 8-yo where fictional stories take place.
>
>  In an Imaginary Place.
>
> Cyberspace is the same - it's observable, it's consistent, it obeys its
> own rules, it just doesn't exist in the material/tangible world.
>
> Drive me to <http://www.google.com>. You can't because it has no
> physical existence.
> I can go where some servers might be, but the address and pages therein
> aren't physical - it's just Cyberspace...
>
> So geography & political boundaries are irrelevant within Cyberspace,
> just as they are within Fiction.
>
> BUT, politicians still need to compose laws about Public Order, Decency
> and Morals.  Whilst they can't impose their will on Cyberspace, they
> *do* have control over what happens in their Jurisdiction.
>
> People in their realm, what parts of Cyberspace are made
> material/tangible, *is* concrete and clearly falls within Legal
> Jurisdictions.
>
> Hope you all are having a nice quiet Saturday Arvo.
>
> regards
> s
>


Steve,

What a wonderful analogy! It seems to be all too true that our politicians
don't understand the 'intangibility' of the internet. All they see is a
channel with all sorts of messages (both vulgar and otherwise) streaming
through it. In all forms of mass media in the past, the point of control has
been an easy target - the film makers, the television studios, the radio
stations. Who do you gag in the case of the internet? You don't know who has
created the grand majority of it - even if you know, how do you catch them?
How do you discipline them? For the first time in history, the things that
humans create can transcend our physical presence and arrive in a
school-kids bedroom - unfettered, unclassified, unexpected, sometimes even
unbidden. No wonder it seems scary! And since they can't go after the source
of these messages (although they have tried and - mostly - failed), they
will go after the only other tangible part of it - the receiver.

/me gets on the phone ... "Mr Orwell! You've gotta come see this!"

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, all :)

L


>
>
> --
> Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>
> sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin<http://members.tip.net.au/%7Esjenkin>
> --
> linux mailing list
> linux at lists.samba.org
> https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux
>



-- 
Cheers! Lana

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build
bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce
bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-- Rick Cook

-----------------------------------------------
http://lanabrindley.blogspot.com
-----------------------------------------------

Please avoid sending me Word, Powerpoint or Windows Media attachments.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html for more
information.

------------------------------------------------