Man! This is great! With thanks to The Barefoot Bum I have come across the Net Authority Offenders Database – a hilarious steaming pile of shit.

In short it is the site of a bunch of people who have taken it upon themselves to define a set of rules for what is not acceptable content for the internet. Here they are:

Since this policy applies to the entire Internet, we felt that it should be spelled out as simply and as universally understandable as possible.
As a result of this, we decided that the best way to write this document would be to model it after something that everyone knows and follows (or at least should!) in their daily lives already. We chose God’s own law—The Ten Commandments. To help keep things simple though, we have narrowed it down to five simple rules.

They then produce these five wonderful rules for the entire internet

1. Thou shalt not post pornographic material.
2. Thou shalt not post hateful material.
3. Thou shalt not post blasphemous material.
4. Thou shalt not post materials of an offensive political nature.
5. Thou shalt not post materials concerning bestiality, including interracial relationships.

That’s it then, five simple rules. But what about Thou shalt not post material that places thou in judgment of thy neighbours? As I recall Jesus indicated that no commandment is more important than the first two[1] and while they may argue that they are not in judgment of me, only of my postings I could still feel judged – not loved – by them. But let me make this plain, I don’t feel judged by them. At best they provide some comedy relief and an opportunity to highlight the absurd levels to which people can take a fundamentalist world view. What I should say here is that I have no problem with their world view being Christian; it would be the same if it were Muslim or Buddhist or Scientologist. The absurd bit is that they (a) reckon that they can provide a glorious umbrella of good vibes for the internet and (b) that rational people would give a shit about what they list in their database. If they had called themselves the Christian Net Authority I would have gladly accepted and supported their right to evaluate and classify my content. But the Net Authority? Fuck you.

And so, in the hopes of being included in their database and therefore being allowed to display the coveted Net Authority Violator badge I have submitted this site to them for evaluation claiming the offenses of Blasphemy and Offensive political material. Unfortunately I cannot offer anything in the way of Pornographic material, Bestiality or Hateful material (as far as I know).
I’ve also decided to provide a list of a few of my existing posts that would hopefully qualify as blasphemic or politically offensive, so if you’re here from Net Authority to check me out don’t forget to click on the links below.

Violate!

But before I get to the list I’d like to mention one more item on the Net Authority list of no-no’s which doesn’t seem to be explicitly covered by the five rules (perhaps a sixth is in order?) being:

You might think that a site that contains stories about dinosaurs for children would be innocent—but let’s stop and think about that for a moment. If you read the bible (you should, it’s great!) you know that dinosaurs never actually existed, and that God put those fossils and bones there to test our faith in Him. While the stories themselves may not contain any offensive material, the simple fact that they are about dinosaurs may cause a child to question his faith in the one true God.

I’ve written before about the Creation Museum, a popular Christian museum in the US that promotes a creation story in which dinosaurs were actually carried on board the Ark with Noah, and that people and dinosaurs co-existed to the extent that humans actually rode dinosaurs with saddles. Given the above statement from Net Authority I have also submitted the Creation Museum’s site to them for evaluation. I hope that they get canned too. Wouldn’t it be interesting if this site were to be included but the Creation Museum’s not? However, given many Christian groups’ propensity for arguments and judgment of one another, I doubt it. But, I would bet money that while I intend proudly displaying my violators badge the Creation Museum wouldn’t do the same. I await the outcome with glee.

God’s dinosaurs!

OK, on with the list.

Blasphemy

• Psychedelic Christian Worship in which I belittle Christian religious experiences as being no different to those produced by illegal psychedelic drugs.
• Buraq – Mohammed’s Wild Ride which derides the literal interpretation of the Islamic story of Mohammed’s ascent to heaven. I know that this post is about a heathen god who does not exist, but I hope that the Net Authority would consider blasphemy against gods of other religions to also count.
• Blasphemy pt1 – enough said. I still have to write part 2 in which I will publish some of my own blasphemic poetry.

Offensive political material

• Ron Paul is an Asshole – Strip Mall Advocacy is about Ron Paul (that blasphemous libertarian candidate) but it does have the word asshole in the title – ’nuff said.
• Blackwater – Guns for Hire – T-shirts for Sale is about the commercialisation of mercenaries. It criticises the very people who keep the soldiers in Iraq safe from those horrible terrorists.
• Bok van Blerk and the kids next door isn’t directly about politics, but it does suggest that minority groups who identify with past (often racially segregated) glory often become totally irrelevant to modern society. Hopefully that will be enough to count as a violation.

I haven’t searched through the blog’s archives, but I’m sure there’s more good stuff there too.

OK, enough with the satire. So what if a group of people want to make rules that, for them, define acceptable content on the internet. I’m really sincere when I say that I believe that to be a good thing. All groups, whether they are liberal or conservative or even anarchist, develop concepts of what the group finds acceptable or not. But to expect that I should feel obligated to abide by them just because you claim that they are for the entire internet is ridiculous. Net Authority; consider yourself ridiculed. Now give me my badge!

[1] Love my dad and love one another