Filtering Fallacies

The List Of Fallacies

jonseymour — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 09:12:15 +0000

Please be sure to view the “List Of Fallacies” for a (partially tounge-in-cheek) list of the fallacies that have been presented in the Mandatory ISP-level Filtering debate.

A salacious sample of over 100 fallacies is listed here:

#10 – The McMenanmin Fallacy: That no price is too high a price to pay, in order to protect the children.
#13 – The Conroy Fallacy: That if you are against the filter, you are for child pornography
#18 – The Hamilton Fallacy: That censoring the Internet is just like censoring other media
#34 -The Rudd Fallacy: That there is a consensus about what porn is and what it is not. See Rule 34.
#82 – The Hamilton Fallacy of Clueless Consent: That people who allegedly support the filter were fully informed of the issues when they gave that support
and so on …

Dissenting Comments

jonseymour — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:42:37 +0000

I decided to append a comment on the Government’s new blog. I believe it was within the moderation guidelines but it appears that they thought it should not be published. Could it be because I questioned whether it was a cynical exercise to remove the heat that will fuel Saturday’s rallies? I am not sure, read my post and decide for yourself.

If you feel like it, please respond to the poll below.

The options are:

Yes
No – They have published comments after mine
No – I haven’t waited long enough
No – I haven’t submitted one.

It’s probably better not to answer the poll if you are going to answer #3. Wait until they have posted articles with timestamps after yours (adjusting your time to AEDT time).

View This Poll

If you have submitted a comment which wasn’t published, post either the comment or a link to it here. If you didn’t keep a copy, please indicate this and give a precis of the argument [ no original works here please! ]. Please include the last Received: header (in gmail Show Original, other mail readers have a show headers feature) to prove that you submitted a comment.

Received: from tw01.dept.gov.au (scmf01 [203.9.200.46])
by dcita00001.intellicentre.net.au (Postfix) with ESMTP id A7D735F80
for ; Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:14:30 +1100 (EST)

I reserve the right to remove any comment that does not meet the Government’s own moderation guidelines.

Update: 11 December 2008, 12:57. My followup comment, but not the original, has been published.

Select The Fallacies That Piss You Off The Most

jonseymour — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 06:38:33 +0000

Here is a selection of some of the most annoying fallacies that have been presented in the mandatory ISP-level filtering debate thus far.

Vote for the ones that piss you off the most.

If it is not listed here, please nominate it in the space provided. Don’t forget to check the list of previously identified fallacies.

View This Poll

Welcome To Filtering Fallacies

jonseymour — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:45:56 +0000

Welcome to Filtering Fallacies.

This blog is a sister blog to “Broadbanned Revolution – fight the philterphiles that be.”

The intention of this blog is to have one post for each fallacy in the Australian Mandatory ISP filtering debate. Sometimes the argument will be put forth directly in the blog, but in other cases, I will simply link to the best expositions of the fallacies in other places.

I encourage everyone to submit their favourite fallacies as comments to this entry or the individual fallacy entries and I’ll write them up.

I make no apologies for the fact that this blog has an explicit anti-filtering agenda, but proponents of the filter are welcome to propose their own fallacies that they believe the anti-filtering camp is guilty of. I reserve the right to present the fallacy in the light that I see it, but others are welcome to point out where I am wrong in comments.

I reserve the right, in advance, to alter any post I write. Where I do this in a way that invalidates someone’s criticism of the previous position (as noted in an existing comment), I will try to take care to note that, but feel free to call me on “unfair” edits.

The list of fallacies (to be) discussed can be found in here.

Updates to the blog description will be maintained here.