Can Democracy Prevail?

As part of week eight's tutorial tasks, we were required to do a set of activities. Completing as many as possible, while staying true to our own personal political beliefs. Firstly I was shocked that the government are still pondering over the possibility of implementing a censorship to Internet content in Australia. A filtering system of sorts, in an attempt to make the Internet more 'pure' or christian.

The thing that bothers me personally is, who gets to decide what should be dubbed as pure or impure content? Don't we as citizens have a democratic right to make our own choices? While I understand that the government wants to reduce improper porn on the Internet and protect our children. I truly believe that allowing too much content control on the Internet would be a negative thing for several reasons. Notably, the sites that may be censored could affect our democratic notion of free speech in general. Secondly, I found a site regarding this issue ,after googling the words 'censor and content Australia': http://nocleanfee.com/learn.html

This site contains a significant amount of evidence as to why this implemntation would be detriemental to Australia. There are several reasons why this change should not take place, apart from democratic reasons. The site is dedicated to eradicating the mere possibility of this change. Therefore this group are exercising their Democratic rights. The site stated that if this move were to take place, it would slow down the Internet in Australia, as the Internet is not a system which can be filtered easily without problems. It would also cost the Australian government quite a lot of money to implement. It argues that this money should logically be used on other more important things such as education and ways sustainable ways to protect children.

Adam, asked us to fill out an e-perdition while adhering to our political views. I found a perdition on the site against censoring Internet content. I readily signed it as I don't believe the move would help our society, but rather it may restrict the voices of many groups. It could be a way for our government to censor any voice that do not want to hear, and therefore could lead to a form of 'Fascism'. So far 29949 people have signed, if you would like to do so make an informed choice, click on the following link:
http://pedition.irgweb.org/oznetcensorship

Another activity I decided to complete which was recommended by Adam, was to find out what Barack Obama had been up to lately. To find this out I decided, to google the words 'Obama and Twitter'. I figured that he would be on twitter, as I heard he is quite committed to using these new forms of communicative technology to reach his publics. On the 23rd of September , 2009, Barack, was in New York meeting various world leaders at the United Nations. He also made a speech during this event. It's pretty incredible that the Internet allows so many people to know exactly where he is. If you would like to become a fan of Barack OBAMA on twitter,(as I know I would have voted for him if I was American)go to: http://twitter.com/barackobama