censorship

Welcome to Draconia, where our laws are impossible to implement.

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Worried about the new Rudd government’s election pledge to ensure all libraries have mandatory internet filtering? Me too.

Let’s hope Kev’s too busy trying to negotiate bringing our combat troops out of Iraq to notice legislation that has been passed in the US House of Representatives. It is not yet L-A-W as it still needs to be passed by the Senate and then the President. It would affect libraries that provide wi-fi for the public.

 


Loli, loli, lolicon! Uploaded o Flickr on November 10, 2007 by adrimaster

According to House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites,

This is what the SAFE Act requires: Anyone providing an “electronic communication service” or “remote computing service” to the public who learns about the transmission or storage of information about certain illegal activities or an illegal image must (a) register their name, mailing address, phone number, and fax number with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s “CyberTipline” and (b) “make a report” to the CyberTipline that (c) must include any information about the person or Internet address behind the suspect activity and (d) the illegal images themselves. (By the way, “electronic communications service” and “remote computing service” providers already have some reporting requirements under existing law too.)

The definition of which images qualify as illegal is expansive. It includes obvious child pornography, meaning photographs and videos of children being molested. But it also includes photographs of fully clothed minors in overly “lascivious” poses, and certain obscene visual depictions including a “drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting.” (Yes, that covers the subset of anime called hentai).

Anyone can be a futurist…

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…and ought to be.

So said Richard Neville during his “Future Quake” talk last night as part of the University of Western Australia’s Universitiy Extension program.

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In the late 80’s I lived across the street from school, and rushed home at lunchtimes to see whether a particular sparky brained, fast talking “social commentator”was on the Mike Walsh Show . The Trials of Oz was my favourite book as a teenager, which made me wish I’d founded a radical underground magazine and been arrested in the late 60’s for “encouraging urination in public ” (Australia) or “conspiring to corrupt public morals”(Britain).

(If you want your mind expanded, baby, here’s an archive of each Oz magazine. If you venture there, ensure the under 18s are not near your machine)

One of his theses last night was that “your whole life can change by noticing something and acting on it“. For example Felix Dennis, co-defendent in the Oz trials, made an awful lot of money with hand printed Bruce Lee posters, and a Kung Fu magazine, after noticing the crowd at a cinema showing one of the first Bruce Lee movies in London. In 1971, if you saw one of the first hand held calculators you may have said “good, that will help me add up”, but what you probably wouldn’t have noticed was the “weak signal of portability” that it encompassed. These “weak signals” are all around, but noticing them, and then acting on them is the key.

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He’s an incredibly mobile speaker -fast talking, wide hand gestures and often threw questions to the audience to answer (How many people worldwide are moving to urban areas each week? How much did the CEO of Exxon earn per minute?) – and prompting us with “come on, come on” when an answer wasn’t forthcoming.

We looked at how future perils may hold promise – like the creativity that we’ll need to embrace to cope with environmental crises. Here’s some new ideas I picked up:

  • Bio-mimicry – observing nature and applying its solutions to our technical problems.
  • The Eastgate Building in Harare which using principles from a termite mound for cooling
  • Ratio of poor:rich worldwide changed from 6:1 in 1980 to 220:1 now
  • Glocalization – being able to think and act both locally and gloabally at the same time
  • Dong Tan City in China is a new eco-cty which aims to be energy neutral.

Nice to learn new ideas, but for the teenager in me, the highlight was this exchange:

  • RN: What was one of the starting points for the information revolution in the 60s?
  • Crowd: Televsion, TV???
  • Me: Paperbacks
  • RN (to me): You’re a soulmate
  • Me: I’m a librarian

Watch out! Reading books can kill you.

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….if they tell you how to kill yourself.

BACKGROUND

Australia’s Federal Attorney General is appealing a decision by the Office of Film and Literature Classification to allow the sale in Australia of Philip Nitshke‘s new book, the Peaceful Pill Handbook.

Dr Nitschke is a prominent voluntary euthanasia campaigner notorious for inventing the “suicide machine“. This includes software to ensure voluntary consent from a terminally ill patient and then allow self administered lethal injection. He has been working toward finding a “mix it yourself” cocktail of drugs to create a “peaceful pill”, which can be used to end life.

The book, which looks like it has very specific factual information about means of death, is being sold online through Exit International: a peaceful death is everyone’s right.

According to Exit,

In December 2006, the Office of Film and Literature Classification decided to provide The Peaceful Pill Handbook with a ‘Restricted Class 1’ Classification. This meant that althought the book was still a Prohibited Import and subject to seizure by Customs – the book could be published and distributed in Australia under strict controls.

The International Edition, which is for sale in US and Canada is in its third print run. He again works with Dr Fiona Stewart, who co-authored his earlier book: “Killing me softly” voluntary euthanasia and the road to the Peaceful Pill, available through Amazon.

MY DILEMMA

I’m a philosophy subject librarian in a university that teaches an Ethics program, so I’m asking myself whether I’d recommend it for our shelves. My cop-out answer is that like all purchases, I’d check with the course controller, and then if I was still unsure, I’d ask my supervisor. OK – but what do I REALLY think?

CON

Our university is full of people in a turbulent time of their lives. Young males have the highest rate of suicide, and they make up a high proportion of our students. I know that traditional Australian media usually don’t report suicides (murder/suicides excepted) in fear of copy cat deaths. Maybe a book like Nitschke’s could be used for murder as well as suicide?

PRO

I believe part of my job involves protecting the right of my readers to make up their own minds, by offering all sides of the story – even those I don’t agree with. People are scared of suicide to an extent that they possibly block out signs of likely self harm in others, and this book might create understanding. Nitschke has stated that his position has been influenced by Dr Peter Singer, and this would illustrate a practical extension of the arguments of someone who is required reading by our students.

My mind weighs on the side of the PROs and my gut on the side of the CONs. Given my doubt, I’d purchase the book…we’re not a public library and what else are university libraries for if not to provide greater understanding? (But I wonder how I’d feel if I found it on one of my boy’s bedroom floor?)