Many find the Net a means of having a voice for the first time, or a way to communicate without the prejudice of first impressions. Others are separated by distance from stores and banks, or want to speak with their fellow hobbyists. For these people, a degraded and crippled Internet service is more than an inconvenience - it's a blow to the way they want to live their lives. In the same week the Canadian Government decided against Internet censorship, the Federal Government has presented this contentious, party-political legislation as if it were the only answer to the only problem. While street kids sleep under bridges and education is being rationalised, it's hard to see why the Government thinks that paying public servants to look at porn is a worthwhile use of taxpayers' money.
Minorities know that censorship is very much a matter of demographics.
Minority viewpoints or lifestyles are at risk of widespread censorship, perhaps hundreds of web sites wiped out with a single keyword. Unacceptable collateral damage to harm-minimisation and health education sites are especially vulnerable. Perhaps the ageing male members of the Senate might consider the results of an Australian Internet filtered against prostate disease information. Every ISP organisation and every hardware vendor knows that the technical ability of a computer to rate, in context, Internet material from all ports and all sources is an impossible dream. Censorship is a human value-judgement, and a machine can't be expected to rate content in real time.