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Filter for the Net should not be a strain

By Victor Paul Borg | China Daily | Updated: 2009-07-10 07:53

I have followed the furor over Green Dam software with interest and ambivalence. On the one hand, I can understand the uneasiness people feel at the idea of having to install in their computer a software that blocks a raft of websites and monitors what people do online.

Internet surfing is perceived as a private experience, and an individual feels liberated by seeing or speaking about anything online, unshackled by social mores and government vigilance. This notion has become so entrenched that something like Green Dam is unquestionably taken as an intrusion of privacy.

Green Dam is designed to directly target websites with violent or pornographic content, but it's apt to widen the discussion about the legitimacy of regulating and monitoring other spheres of content. The Net may be a private individualistic experience, but it has also become a public space.

Filter for the Net should not be a strain

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