Your one stop site for slightly confused rants and half-assed reviews.
Updates whenever I have both the desire to write and a good idea.
Also, we have always been at war with Oceania.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Fractured

As you may be aware, Australia has some pretty intense censorship laws in comparison to other western countries (does Germany count as western?). When they are not outright banning media they are gutting it of its content, and in their spare time they are building a giant internet filter.

Left 4 Dead 2 Refusal of Classification

Though I'm rather ambivalent about the game, I am all for it getting into the country unchanged but apparently hacking the limbs off the zombies is too graphic. Outright banning probably won't occur as Valve will nerf the violence instead. So L4D2 could end up like No More Heroes, mechanically fine but visually butchered.
Last year Fallout 3 was also refused classification. What's strange about this is that the refusal was due to drug use, and not violence. Violence such as the slow motion kills you get from using VATS (ie all the time).

Mandatory Australian Firewall

I have difficulty trying to express my contempt for this idea without resorting to unimaginative responses like 'Luddite thinking' or 'where are we, China?'. On the most basic level the proposed firewall slows down all of Australia's internet.
What I find more troublesome is the vagueness of what will be banned and what won't. Content that is outright illegal (child porn, snuff films etc) is obviously out but things that are either immoral or offensive may be in danger. This worries me because not only do I enjoy some things that are technically immoral/offensive but I also don't like the government having a say in what's right and wrong (barring actual laws of course).
On a slightly more absurd note, I find it interesting that they'll be blocking child porn because I was under the impression that they used those sites to track down paedophiles. It would be funny (in the blackest sense) if paedophilia in Australia rose due because authorities couldn't track any down, and also because without the internet they had to make their own entertainment.

Even though I'm being hypothetical I may have crossed a line there.

Alternative Democracy

Half-heartedly researching this post made me wonder who the hell I should have voted for last election. My biggest complaint with democracy is that voters don't have nearly as much choice as they are made out to have. All you can do is vote for a party and hope they go through their promises. Given that people with actual knowledge and experience in politics have failed to come up with a good solutions to democracy's shortcomings I don't claim to have the answers; however I would like it if there was some way to make an 'antivote'. While I find it hard to find a party I agree with, I find it easy to think of one I want to keep out of power.

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