The Daily Smartass

Someone told me once that I had oil on the brain: the propensity to speak what ever blubber was sitting atop my brain (mush) without  considering how it would be interpreted by others. It’s landed me in many difficult situations, leaving me to steadily back-pedal to save face. Every once in a while, a little self-censorship kicks in and saves me from myself. I’m not perfect, but I like a little slip of the tongue every now and again; just to stir things up.

Naturally, there are takedowns – not everyone thinks it’s a great idea to spew your sentiments freely. The Australian government has issued it’s latest weapon on free speech: internet filtering. Consisting of massive pipes physically directed to the homes of Prime Minister Rudd and Senator Conroy, the aim here is to keep the internet squeaky clean for the netizens of Australia. Thank god someone’s stepping in, for a while there I was starting to get worried.

Paint brushes and placards down before we start the picket lines, the filters are very specific. Conroy’s (fairly) adamant that they’re only going to push for the ban of illegal content with a specific emphasis on child pornography. There’s no need to worry – yet. Still, I couldn’t help but think of net censorship as a catapulting snowball: it’s going to slowly roll toward us, creeping up ever so slowly. Until it’s no longer a snowball, but a gargantuan white wrecking ball.

So, in the interests of staying ahead of the game, I present the revised list of topics or sites that will be added to the blacklist in the future:

• Video streaming: the videos showing pets trying to attempt human like behaviour are both misleading and dangerous. Displaying such content publicly could prompt an uprising of the lesser species in a Darwinian-esque power struggle. We are trying to cull the amount of baboons, monkeys and seagulls running the country – not increase them. Furthermore, that video of your Mum (sister/brother/grandma) blasting “My heart will go on” into her hairbrush is not only preposterous but repulsive.
• Online shopping (conditional): with the flagging economy, it will no longer be acceptable for you to purchase goods from sites outside of Australia. Why on earth would you want to bail another country out of the slimy economic disaster anyway? Besides, by stomping out all non-Aussie sites we’ve made it easier for you to choose what we you want to buy. Sure, it might cost a fraction more. But, as long as you’re not buying new undies, we’re keeping the jobs in-house.
• News websites: they’re completely impractical. Nobody wants the inconvenience of being interrupted by current news and events as they happen – it’s too hectic. With those computers whirring away all day long, it’s simply not environmentally friendly. Let’s return to the glory days: broadsheets and tabloids from media conglomerates. It’s not stifling the news, we just want to make sure everyone’s on the same page (pun intended).
• Online gaming: we need to get back to the grass roots of what the internet is about – productivity and sharing information. Let’s use it as a governmental tool to keep you all in the loop about how we’re doing. It’ll still be interactive. There’ll be buttons you can click with feedback (that disappears into the ether) that you can submit too. It will be awesome. Wayne Swan has already started coding it.

The future looks rosy in net-land, no? Outlandish as they may seem, it’s not out of the realm of possibilities that our government could consider. I don’t like to play fear card often, or even be serious. But net sensorship is a blood-boiler for me. I’m simply not willing to accept that our traffic online should be monitored in Orwellian like fashion.

Because, it starts off with child porn and P2P and progresses eventually to China. And I’m not good at using chopsticks.