Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, a prominent advocate of online freedom said, "the key to protecting children and others from hardcore harm is for citizens to better inform themselves about the Internet and how it works."
So at least one person in government actually gets it.
Not that I'm advocating for porn (they have their own supporters), but I am advocating for a more educated Internet user. Why should 'net users have laws crammed down our throats because people can't be bothered to take some time and smarten up. Geez we put warning labels on products why don't we just ban those items too. Are we saying that are citizenry is just too frikken stoopid tooz unnerstan? Porn is an easy target. Not really socially acceptable, yet someone must be consuming it somewhere because they are still raking in billions. Maybe there are a few really rich reclusive porn consumers or else people just aren't admitting that they occasionally partake of adult entertainment. Yes, I know that Iceland is talking about the sub-genre of adult entertainment that deviates from what most people consider normal.
And once this COUNTRY-wide porn ban is in place, which is either going to be rather lax because of an ill conceived porn definition. Or else extremely draconian because they threw every possible permutation of "porn" into the filter. Ok, I guess we will just not expect much research into human sexuality to come out of Iceland. How long before this is attempted by other countries? We already know that there is censorship of the Internet in certain countries.
And why would anyone want to follow Iceland as an example. They were short sighted enough to create a credit driven economy. All their banks failed. Oh and now they are capable of deciding what is appropriate on the Internet.
The Internet is a whole big wonderful tool. It allows access to an incredible amount of information. But like everything else there is a dark and ugly side. Why is there always a someone, somewhere has to decide "yup, I think I will bend a rule. I'm not breaking it per se but not quite following it either." You've seen this mentality. The driver that passes the Speed Limit sign that reads 25, but I'm only going 32... Uh, yeah. It takes more time and a longer distance to stop the momentum that extra 7 mph. The "Please take one" candies that seems to disappear faster than there were people around to partake of this treat.
Really. I'm also not saying people should be ants either. But there should be a happy medium. A compromise that allows for a stable society and yet flexible to allow for growth.
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