In Australia, people have already faced charges for possession or distribution, via the Net, of child abuse material in Western Australia, South Australia, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland without Net-specific legislation. Whilst most of the censorship advocates appear to be well-intentioned, most are utterly ignorant of the realities of the Net . Their concerns are initiated and fuelled solely by the mainstream media who continually incite fear and hysteria with their irresponsible danger on the information superhighway reports . And you can actually find it more easily in libraries, bookstores, newsagents, on television, in video shops and so on. Unfortunately it's not only the general public who believe everything they read in the mainstream media.
Politicians apparently do too and they're the ones who enact legislation.
In Australia, some Senators use misinformation in media reports to justify Net censorship. If you think not, you should think again. In a victory for everyone who uses computer communications, a three-judge panel in Philadelphia's Federal Court struck down the Communications Decency Act on 12 June 1996, ruling in a unanimous decision that it violates the US constitutional guarantees of free speech and of the press. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects.