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Are
we no longer able to think for ourselves?
I
sent an email to a friend this week and I had the privilege to
receive shortly after it a response from his company's IT
department that the email was being held in isolation until
the recipient (my mate) could vouch for it. The reason
for this was that I had breached the companies Profanity
Policy and as such he could not view the email because of the
odd swear word in the text.
OK,
I can understand an organisation attempting to reduce /
eliminate non-work related email. I can also understand
and fully support the anti-porn or other inappropriate
material being accessed via an organisations computers.
You can't bring X rated paper based material to work - why
should you access it online. It's not the done thing...
But
what I can't understand is how a company can take the
executive decision to attempt to limit their staff's access or
exposure to swearing... What are the staff at this company (a
large financial services firm) thinking? Does management
believe they should be treated as children? Does the
work place require a G rating?
Recently,
a number of films have been banned by The Censors. Ken
Park and Baise Moi (sp?) were banned by the Australian
Government Censors because they contained explicit and actual
sex and violence. Yet funnily enough, we can get X rated
material over the counter in all major cities, but we cannot
see these particular movies at all (I acknowledge I haven't
actually seen these films - they are banned you know - and
hence cannot truly comment on their nature).
The
role of the Censors should be simply this. 1) View the
Material 2) Rate it according to pre-established
guidelines. End of Story.
It
is not the Censors job to "decide" what a reasonably
minded consenting adult can look at. They are not there
to shield us from the less than pleasant aspects of human
nature. What they are there for is to simply pre-warn
people that the material is of a certain nature, be it
sexually explicit or violent or anything else and then let the
viewer (ie the adult) decide.
Now
before you go on about "protecting the children" it
is not the censors job to do that either - it is the parent's
role. If I believe my children should see something,
then I should be the one and only arbitrator in that decision
making process. Not some conservative Liberal voter
stuck in a government office in Canberra.
So,
back to my friend and his Profanity Policy...
It
took me and my mates (who were included on the email) 2
minutes to get around it... the creative use of symbols (#, @
etc) and the spelling of words as they sound not as they are
renders a Profanity Policy "impotent"...
I
think that is a valid lesson for all those who wish to censor
another person... no matter how big or how wide you build your
fence, somebody will get over, under or around it and make you
out to be foolish....
Give
back the right to choose!
-------
Think
I'm nuts, let me know via email
or leave a message at the ClayInfinity
Forum...
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