Oppose the "CyberSafety" Constituency Petition and Charter

[Dan Lyke <danlyke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As filtering of content on the Internet becomes more widespread, moving
from extremist countries like China and the strict Muslim countries in
the Middle East into areas that we normally think of as developed and
enlightened, like Australia, we see more and more that the effects of
filtering and censorship are never limited to the original stated
purposes, control of content transferred over the Internet always leads
to the abuse of that power for political or social controls.

Although I concede that allowing those who would exploit children and
oppress human beings free and unfettered communication with children
and the exploitable may be a bad thing, in practice we far too often
see that giving wider control over communication and speech results in
more oppression and more exploitation.

If those who want to create a "safe" (by their definitions) web had
clear intentions, they'd be proposing an opt-in version, a system
whereby those who wanted to participate in the "clean" web could set up
web servers and browsers which only talked to each other. This could be
done without the intervention of ICANN.

Instead it's clear that they want a big lever to control the speech of
us all, and by doing so control the abilities of us not merely to act,
but to think and to share those thoughts. Thus they have more in common
with the censors of China and Saudia Arabia than they do with those
who'd work for emancipated humanity and unexploited children.

Daniel Lyke