[LINK] Labor bid to block net porn

[Danny Yee]

Chris Maltby wrote:
> Actually, that's relatively easy, as long as you are prepared
> to accept a certain level of false matches. 

I think it's quite clearly established that all systems for automated
content classification either produce massive numbers of "false matches"
(I use scare quotes here because any criteria for "pornography" or
"X-rated" will be subjective and contested) or fail to block most of
what they're intended to.

> The hard and
> potentially costly part is the administrative effort to keep the
> list of blocked sites and of the opt-out customers up to date.
 
Not to mention providing accountability and redress for people whose
web sites get misclassified.  That's not so much a technical problem,
though, as a social one.  (There's a reason the current ABA Net censorship
system lacks any transparency of accountability -- that would make it's
arbitrariness and inanity too obvious.  The use of "confidential reports"
to try and influence politicians seems to be part and parcel of this.)

> The idea has apparently come from the Australia Institute who are
> generally considered to be a reasonably progressive think tank.

I used to consider the Australia Institute a progressive think tank
and they have produced some good material.  Their stance on Internet
censorship, however, has been so clueless that I now find it hard to
credit anything they produce.

> The classification and ratings system used to provide parental
> guidance for TV, films etc is not scalable to deal with the
> problems of the internet - leaving aside the problems of locality
> and jursidiction. Opt-out filtering may be the only practical way 
> to meet this need. 

It's not clear to me what bearing the failure of traditional ratings
systems has on the need for opt-out filtering rather than opt-in
filtering, which exists already and is provided by many ISPs.

But the real problem is that filtering doesn't make access reliably
"child friendly" -- blocking (say) 80% of the "adult content" won't
free parents from having to worry about supervising their children.
And that's true with both opt-in and opt-out filtering.

The UK scheme is being deployed to block a narrow range of material --
only child pornography -- and not the huge sprawling mass of X-rated
content.  That makes the problem a lot easier.  But our politicians' and
lobbyists' obsessions with X- and R-rated content pretty much guarantee
they'll never restrict themselves to goals that might be achievable.

Danny.
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