The government does it again
Tue, 25 Sept 2007, 01:49 pmNa26 posts in thread
The government does it again
Tue, 25 Sept 2007, 01:49 pmThe government is hoping to curtail our freedom of speech (and reading) even further, by not allowing us to access all of the internet. Apparently.
The following was posted on Mashable.com:
Several privacy advocates are in an uproar in response to a bill introduced by Australia’s Parliament, which would grant the country’s federal police the power to control which sites can be accessed by users of the Internet. Titled the Communications Legislation Amendment (Crime or Terrorism Related Internet Content) Bill 2007, the federal police would have the power to add onto (or remove from) the blacklist, naming sites that are currently banned from Australia , as determined by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
This extends the rights of the ACMA onto the federal police, which appears to some as a way of limiting the rights of freedom of speech. The legislation is being promoted as a way to target phishing and terrorist sites, as well as those that publish information on other criminal activity. However, we’ve all been subjected to politicians taking action under the guise of protecting us from terrorism, and the result is several privacy groups that are wary of this bill being passed. Next thing we know, Australia will be blocking YouTube.
Read more about it here.
The outrage comes when
Thu, 27 Sept 2007, 08:51 pmThe outrage comes when people try to edit information which is supposed to inform people. Wikipedia was created to provide a free access, community-built information service, which was to provide reliable, proven encyclopedic explanations.
The problem is that anyone can edit it, which means that instead of providing reliable information, it can become a war of words (find the site Wikirage and see how much is edited) over opinion, rather than fact.
In other words - anyone can edit the page on the Holocaust and say it never happened. To many people around the world, this is beyond an insult. And what if people edit medical pages, which results in people taking bad advice on medical conditions, operations, etc.
What people need to do is sign up for Citizendium. It is the same premise of Wikipedia, except that the site admins request you provide a verifiable identification before editing or contributing. It was founded by one of Wikipedia's founders.
The issue isn't that there should be free speech; the issue is that this is a resource that has put itself in the forefront of 'reliable' and 'accurate', researched articles, and that it cannot sustain the level of uneducated editings that it has come to take. The point of allowing other people to write and edit was to aim to create articles that became more accurate as more people contributed providing a collective insight and depth. Instead it backfired.
You will find that across the net, many people are now encouraging others not to use the site because of the issues of everyone editing.
And I doubt the cops will close down wikipedia. It's an American company remember... and they have free speech in their constitution.
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