You may have noticed that the blog has been scarce with posts recently. That’s because I took another week off, relaxing and trying to recover from a bad RSI attack. The house I stayed in only had dialup, which decreased my computer use substantially – and a lovely thing it was too.<\/p>\n
Now I’m home again and over the last couple of days have been sucked into the usual round of news-reading, Twitter feeds and trying not to procrastinate. And, fuck, if it isn’t depressing.<\/p>\n
I came back feeling motivated and creative, but in the last few days I’ve felt overwhelmed and pessimistic. A lot of this is thanks to the ongoing bullshit that is the Australian plans for a mandatory internet filter. In the last few days it’s emerged that the “watchdog” is happy to blackban political sites<\/a> on the say-so of a single person. The people who want the filter are still telling the same lies and it seems that everyday punters continue to believe the nonsense.<\/p>\n And then I find that Britain, Germany and a bunch of other countries are all planning their own filters citing Australia as some kind of magical filter paradise.<\/p>\n Friends, the seige of the free internet has begun. The politicians have realised that the internet has given us POWER. We’re able to make decisions, to muster support and to make our voices heard without the mainstream media getting in our way. We’re mobilising. We’re active. And we’re fucking powerful. They’re going to do their best to try and stop us, and they’re going to use porn and “the children” as their excuse.<\/p>\n That’s the other depressing thing. I keep seeing so many news items about porn lately and it’s always reported in a negative fashion. Porn is the great, amorphous enemy, despoiling lives hither and yon. Never mind that religion does far more damage in the world, it’s our clits and cocks that are the problem!<\/p>\n These are big issues and I want to wave the flag and encourage the fight… but, damn, if it isn’t draining and very, very difficult to be involved. And it makes it hard to do my everyday work, because I’m always spending brainpower thinking about how to argue against the filter and its supporters. At the same time, I feel the future looming like a black thundercloud. We’ve had a wonderful twenty years but now the fight for online freedom is about to begin in earnest.<\/p>\n I do hope the other free countries of the world are watching what goes down here in Oz with regards to the filter, because if it goes ahead it will be like a big green light to other repressive governments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You may have noticed that the blog has been scarce with posts recently. That’s because I took another week off, relaxing and trying to recover from a bad RSI attack. The house I stayed in only had dialup, which decreased my computer use substantially – and a lovely thing it was too. Now I’m home again and over the last couple of days have been sucked into the usual round Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[87,332,333,427],"class_list":["post-1179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","tag-australia","tag-filter","tag-filtering","tag-internet"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t