Lecture 8 - Being a Digital Citizen (Censorship and Filesharing)

Censorship is the control or restrictions of certain information on the internet. The government may deny its citizens access to certain websites and information, and this is a burning issue here in Australia as the government wants to implement Internet Censorship. This raises a lot of controversies and conflicts with the deontological rights of a citizen. These (deontological rights) are pre-legal rights, (independent of the Law) which exist regardless of the consequences associated with enforcing them. It brings up the idea that as citizens, we have rights that cannot be interfered with.I think that people are rational (able to choose appropriate means to achieve their goals/ desires) and independent so the power of the government on individuals should be limited and they should let people be!
The government’s plan to filter the internet does not only deprive the citizens of their rights, but it is likely going to cause some technical problems as well. It is likely that the internet’s performance will become slow and the prices will also do higher.
In the lecture we also watched a movie, STEAL THIS MOVIE, which discussed the issue of file sharing from a neutral point of view.