Watch out what you wish for

I have never understood the disproportionate amount of political capital and media attention expended around the idea of censorship on moral grounds.

As technologically mediated social interactions and modes of existing increasingly depend on online symbols, online mandatory censorship creates a dangerous approach to re-shaping technologically mediated reality.

The recent backflip to change the mandatory filtering scheme to content which is deemed "RC" (Refused Classification) is not a complete back-flip. It re-confirms at the very least there will be some sort of mandatory filter administered by the ACMA (Australian Communication and Media Authority).

I had always thought if you were going to oppose something on morals grounds, you'd exert more effort opposing the event rather than the communication of it yet the Australian Christian Lobby wasn't happy with the current version mandatory filter saying it didn't go far enough.

Personally I'm not happy about having any sort of filter and my opposition is also on moral grounds. There are a number of pragmatic considerations also, ones that respectfully lend themselves to a real-politik between Baudrillard's simulacra and actuality.

For example recently I was reading an article about euthanasia and censorship and the author noted he'd "... been struck by the number of laws that seek to prevent the flow of facts. They haven't been hugely effective to this point, but they're probably going to become more so soon."

The issue with blanket bans on specific content is that academic or research oriented content is likely to be obscured by those efforts too. For example on researching about censorship on wikileaks this author came across an "insiders" open letter about the child pornography "industry", it's hosted at Wikileaks. It's contents may offend some but realistically I believe information like this should be available - if not for any other reason than to inform the public that the actual events take place in the first place.

For those trying to create a sugar coated simulation of reality while ignoring the real causes of social symptoms need to be careful what they wish for... taking this idea to a logical extreme, it's conceivable to have a constituency that are unable to inform themselves. This scatter effect might even get bigger and has the dangerous power of creating a society that is washed against seeing it's own failures and ills, as well as how it deals with "fringe" topics.