“ Malo Mokofisi. Let me try to clarify myself as I do agree that what I wrote before could be construed as being illogical.
My comment regarding parents is regarding the statement from Tuipeatau that "The concern that children with mobiles are accessing inappropriate content is valid, however, the responsibility should belong to parents not the 'state'". Hence, my statement what if there are no functional parents in the lives of these children either because the parents divorce, move overseas while the children stays in Tonga, etc. So, if there is no help from these parents, and no help from the state then what then? Let it be, I guess.
I know that there are existing laws for printed material, movies, broadcasting in both TV and Radio. Thus the state decides, regulates and tells us what contents that are appropriate for us consumers in the various communication medium of books,magazines,radio,movies and TV. There is already an existing Czar which may be an individual or group of people that had been doing this job since the above technologies came to Tonga. However, I don't know of anyone who had lodged a complaint or voice an opinion that this act of censorship by the state is bad as it infringes on our rights for free speech.
The Internet is a different animal in how it works but is just ANOTHER medium of delivery. The existing laws in Tonga is not enough to enable the government to continue to do its censorship duties that it had been doing for the other medium of communication. Hence, I believe the reason for this new bill being proposed.
So, what I was trying to say is that, if this new proposal to control Internet traffic is bad as we consumers knows best then I propose to take it further to the other medium of delivery. For example, no more regulation for printed material so any store can sell pornography magazine (discretely of course) and we as parents should educate our children not to buy these material as they are not appropriate. This is an infringement on our freedom and it should be stop.
Or how about, abolish the regulation of TV and any one who wants to start up a TV that brodacast pornographic material should be able to do so. Let the choice of the consumers decide if it is something profitable to be done in Tonga, but it is NOT a job of the state to say no to its availability. And again, parents can program their TV to filter out these TV programs and block it but it is NOT a job of the state.
So that is what I was trying to say. That is, we can't be OK with state regulation and censorship with pre-Internet technologies and suddenly go aginst it when the Internet arrives. And if we want no regulation with Internet delivery content, then we shoud also remove all regulation of the other medium of delivery such as movies, printed materials, Radio and TV.
Malo ”