United Future crazy new enemy of free speech

"United Future MP Paul Adams appears to be showing a disturbing pro-censorship side of his party in calling for Internet Service Providers to be liable for content that their customers send or access over the Internet," announced Libertarianz Spokeman on Free Speech Scott Wilson today.

"China, Singapore and other authoritarian governments attempt with much futility to filter out content about which their own self-proclaimed guardians of the people' disapprove. Besides the technical impossibility of doing so successfully, and the enormous compliance cost this places on ISPs, Adams' call for compulsory content filtering shows an unwelcome eagerness to dabble in Big Brother tactics - invading the privacy of communications, with the excuse of "protecting society". Trevor Rogers tried this, and everyone knows where he went politically" warned Wilson.

"What is most disturbing is how quick Adams is to construct straw men to justify his censorship leanings," notes Wilson. "Adams claims that the killers of Michael Choy 'clearly saw an image somewhere' of 'someone being hit with a baseball bat and bouncing straight back up' - yet there is no evidence at all for this assertion. Why is he so keen to blame 'images' for making the thugs kill Michael Choy, rather than insist they are responsible for the murder they committed?"

Wilson wonders why Adams is so keen to apparently manufacture evidence to back up his arguments, wondering if perhaps it means he himself is unconvinced of the veracity of his own claims. For instance, Adams also continues to claim that the boy in Cambridge who wrote a perfectly natural essay about erections got that from music, when what that boy wrote was neither illegal nor immoral."

Wilson called for United Future Leader Peter Dunne to make it clear whether his party thinks that China/Singapore type regulation of the Internet is policy, and why there is something wrong with a boy writing about his body when his teacher asks him to.

Clarifying Libertarianz policy Wilson says that "the Internet should be treated like all other mediums. The only regulations on published content should be laws on defamation and for the protection of intellectual property, and laws protecting the rights of victims of actual crimes from having their images used for purposes for which they have not given permission."

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