…with apologies to the Coen brothers, and continuing Stropp’s theme.
If you don’t know about Australia’s plans to restrict the kind of gaming most of us reading these blogs do (no, I don’t mean online poker, I mean MMOs), read Stropp’s passionate post. Also read Scott Jennings’ as usual extremely smart and cogent post on same. Here’s a link I stole from Stropp, to the Sydney Morning Herald’s article. Unsurprisingly this is attracting very little attention elsewhere in the news — it certainly doesn’t come up real easy on a Google search.
Stropp asked his readers to pass the news along, which is what I’m doing. This is blatant censorship of the worst kind, and just because it’s halfway around the world doesn’t mean it can’t, like a case of the clap, spread much closer to home. Besides, I despise censorship.
I truly feel bad for you guys in Australia. You get hosed on prices for games, hosed on release dates (even getting games at all sometimes), and now this?
Censorship enslaves minds.
I fully support protecting the young from certain things until they have critical thought processes, but to restrict adults is purely asinine.
Yep. All those things are true. Prices especially, release dates are usually not too bad, for MMORPGs within a couple of days, though sometimes a few hours before the US!
Censorship doesn’t just enslave minds, it stops them thinking and deprives a person of the information necessary to make a rational informed decision on a topic. It’s an evil.
If there were some legit way to identify who is young and who is old, like a driver’s license, but for online people (Online surfing license, anyone?) Then I might be in favor of blocking content for those under 18 and yadda yadda but now you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater by blocking anything a certain body of individuals deems “unworthy”. Its not a far stretch more to just have the government control everything you see and hear. I dislike censorship when it has no checks and balances such as this kind. It just spreads if nothing is keeping it in check and this one was initiated without any common sense in the first place.
Too bad parents aren’t actually doing their jobs. Then the State wouldn’t have to do it for them.
Ah, the valiant Nanny State, guarding our children…quis custodiet ipsos custodes?