This is an interesting thread from an Australian perspective because it highlights the difficulty of seperating the best from the worst of US developement - Whereas the US was first colonised by puritans, Australia was settled by convicts shipped out from England as punishment for petty crimes (so lots of prostitutes and petty thieves) - one consequence of this is that Australia has a far more relaxed and sensible attitude towards sexuality - (the leaders of the third and fourth largest political parties who together hold the balance of power in the Senate are both gay a fact that draws no undue/adverse comment) - in contrast - the puritanism of the early US settelers continues to cast a dark and shizophrenic shadow upon contemporary american life - but but but - that very puritanism was (crucially) a particular variant of ascetic calvanism that placed a huge value on hard work and progress (spiritual worth was indicated by worldly success) - with the transplantation of that ethos to an immense resource rich new world - capitalism takes off and never looks back - whilst we've all benefited from that we nevertheless still see the same tension being tirelessly played out in ever new forms - the present danger is that the latent puritanism of computer iliterate american policy makers can be drawn upon to provoke moral panics about the dangers of the internet by absolutely amoral folks actually only concerned with a perceived threat to their worldly success (come on down RIAA/Hilary)

creating some sort of all powerful internet nanny or internet-lite wouldn't address the underlying cultural/economic tension that leads to so much (very easily filtered out) pornography being available via gnutella - all it could ever be would be a profoundly undemocratic strategy that concentrated even more power in the hands of businesses that are so afraid of their clients that they'd rather smash the telephone exchange than risk people making calls to someone other than themselves

bad_vlad