I'm in Australia.tokage wrote:What I did hear of was Australia, where recent discussions lead to censoring web sites with the topic of games rated unappropriate for under 15-year-olds.
Here some google results for the topic. And that can very well affect this website and forums as well, when you think about it.
When this was first announced I was downright infuriated. Luckily the government is currently unable to get it through one of our two houses of parliament. Huh... never thought I would be grateful for the Liberal party.
Anyway, the proposed blacklist was leaked to the internet some time back. It was largely made up of illegal porn of various flavours. Child porn, rape, bestiality, that sort of thing. (I'd put a link up but there is some genuinely nasty shit on said list, so no.) Unfortunately, they then started adding sites relating to abortion, homosexuality, regular porn, euthanasia and, yes, video games.
The initial trials showed that the proposed filter system:
a) Produced nasty slowdown. The more accurate the filter, the slower it goes.
b) Didn't even f**king work, even when operating correctly.
c) Could often be avoided or bypassed, no 1337 hax0r skills required.
The whole point of this thing is to protect kids from looking at stuff they probably don't need to see. Never mind that children under 11-12 or thereabouts aren't going to be interested anyway. Unfortunately an automatic filtering system can't tell the difference between a 13 year old boy looking for pictures of naked chicks and a 24 year old adult who wants to know more about abortion (or buy Overgrowth.)
Personally, I am sick to death of this whole "think of the children" crap. If parents are too incompetent to monitor what their kids do on the computer, that is their problem, not mine. Use an optional filter or something. Idiots.
I am fully aware of how cliche and unimpressive it is to threaten violence on an internet forum, but if that censoring policy ever goes through, I intend to find the nearest politician who supported it and set his home on fire.
[/rant]
I feel much better now.