Re: <nettime> Conor Friedersdorf: The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good (The Atlantic)

[Angela Mitropoulos <s0metim3s@gmail.com>]

There has been some discussion and analysis of this, in relation to the 
internet but also politics more generally, but surely not enough.

There was the Livejournal Strikethrough of 2007 
<http://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough>. The Northern Territory 
Intervention in Australia (which, among other things, banned internet 
porn; and as it unfolds has become a series of significant reforms to 
welfare, generally awful ones) 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Territory_National_Emergency_Response>. 
Some good discussion/analysis at this last year 
<http://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/Week-of-Mon-20101025/002859.html>. 
And there was, of course, the furor over the Bill Henson exhibition in 
Sydney a few years back.

There are three books I'd recommend: Lauren Berlant's The Queen of 
America, which discusses the rise (during the period of the Reagan 
presidency) of a politics of the American fetus and the American child; 
Joanne Faulkner's, The Importance of Being Innocent: Why We Worry About 
Children; and Lee Edelman's No Future.

That said, I've not come across a sustained history/analysis of this in 
relation to the internet specifically. I'd be interested to know if I've 
missed something along those lines. It's become so pivotal to the 
reorganisation of politics, welfare, communication, and more besides, 
that -- while I know that criticism is often circumvented by the more or 
less explicit accusation that critics must be defending child porn (or 
worse) -- I wonder at the rarity of intellectual and political bravery. 
I also wonder whether it's at all possible to analyse emerging forms of 
internet censorship without confronting this aspect.

best,
Angela


On 3/08/2011 11:24 PM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

> Kiddieporn appears to still function as the primary omnibus baseball
> bat to smash 'the anarchy' on the Internet (with terrorism a good
> second). But as with 'white slave trafficking' it will become
> interesting to see when the concept itself that it seeks to
> represent will come under closer scrutiny...

-- 


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org