Mr. Speaker, distinguished members of the house, The opposition concedes that
proctecting children and to enable adults to avoid material which offends their
personal & community standards should be one of the goals of the government.
Having said that, we must find realistic and practical solutions in order to
address this issue. Is regulating the internet the answer? Before answering this
question, there are many factors to be considered. As the member of the
opposition has stated, no single set of standards is appropriate to all users,
how can we regulate and deem what’s appropriate for one, everyone is different.
What one may find offensive on the net, others may not. By restricting the flow
of information on the internet, the public will not be able to obtain every
possible information which is available to them. Although there will always be
certain sites which emits offensive material, it gives us a true balance of our
society. By making the internet a perfect world will mislead the public’s
perception of our true society. Mr. Speaker, the public should have the right to
choose which kind of information he or she would like to view. The users should
be given the responsibility of private censorship. Like in other cases, adults
must provide children with a safe and supportive environment in which to play
and learn in. This can be done by subscribing to a filtered Internet Service
Provider or by installing a filtering software, it should not be required as the
Honorable Prime Minister is proposing. Self-censorship should be decided by the
users themselves and not regulated by the government. The Prime Minister has
also maintained that there needs to be a rating authority for websites on the
internet.
Mr. Speaker, although this may seem appropriate, it would be almost
impossible to implement. We must remember that unlike print media, one of the
advantages of having the internet is to let individuals who have no access or
who cannot afford a publisher, the opportunity to be heard. With the amount of
information uploaded every second onto the internet, it would be very hard for a
rating authority to anaylize these uploads. If a suitable rating must be given
before any information is to be displayed on the internet, webmasters would have
to wait a considerable amount of time before their work can be viewed over the
internet. Mr. Speaker, as my member of opposition as stated, by banning or
blocking out certain websites will result in a high social cost, this can be
controlled locally, but not on a global scale. The effect would be minimal if
not noticeable, and the cost of implementing this would be very high. There are
no practical ways of restricting the users, in an era of extreme information
fluidity in which every barrier to information can be by passed in several ways
will make it very hard for the government to make such a restriction on the
internet. Any knowledgeable user can log online and use a different proxy server
to by pass these barriers. The Minister of the Crown has expressed there are
harmful informations available on the internet which should be regulated.
Getting information, such as instructions to build a bomb can certainly cause
harm to the public if it is in the wrong hands. However we must realize that by
taking such information off the internet will not be the answer. These harmful
information can be obtained through many other mediums. Mr. Speaker, information
of how to build a bomb can be obtained at your local library, banning certain
information on the internet will not be the solution. Stopping and capturing
individuals who present harm to the society should be the issue, it would be
ignorant to name the Internet as the scapegoat. As for regulating copyright
materials on the internet, the government has not proposed any practical and
realistic ways to go about this. Problems for the protection of the rights of
the different industries, be it music, print and so on, should be addressed. But
once again, The Crown presents a false image to the public, regulating the
internet to uphold copyright will not solve the problem at hand.
