I was just reading an article about how the Canadians are wanting to ban child pornogrpahy, racial hatred and promotion of violence against women, which left me wondering… Is banning someone from Internet access for 7-years that much of a fitting punishment? I mean, sheesh! You couldn’t get a job for 7 years - even BestBuy store clerks need to use the Internet for company e-mail, price checks, etc.

Racial hatred strikes me as a rather difficult thing to police, as it is… Where should the line be drawn between humour and hurt? What if it’s just an accidental slip of the tongue? Things happen, and I know in the past that I’ve said something which someone has found racist unintenitonally. Sometimes I think it’s a bit silly how the person interpereted (as it was not intended to be insulting in the slightest) but people view things in different ways. As ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ can now be classed as racism here in the UK as it is, what happens if we’re racist wihtout realising it?

So how’s Internet Community Service sounding? We make the poor sods who find insulting people based on their colour amusing, clean up comment spam on our blogs, edit Wikipedia articles, etc… To me, it seems like a win-win situation. Enforcing it may be slightly harder, but heck. That comes later.

How should we police the net? Should we even police the net? I’m against general censorship (like in China), but I agree that porn, etc should be dealt with or at least made sure that people know what they’re viewing before doing so.