[LINK] Web censorship plan heads towards a dead end

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Web censorship plan heads towards a dead end
Asher Moses
February 26, 2009 - 2:54PM
SMH
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/02/26/1235237810486.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

The Government's plan to introduce mandatory internet censorship has 
effectively been scuttled, following an independent senator's decision 
to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation required 
to get the scheme started.

The Opposition's communications spokesman Nick Minchin has this week 
obtained independent legal advice saying that if the Government is to 
pursue a mandatory filtering regime "legislation of some sort will 
almost certainly be required".

Senator Nick Xenophon previously indicated he may support a filter that 
blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he 
withdrew all support, saying "the more evidence that's come out, the 
more questions there are on this".

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has consistently ignored 
advice from a host of technical experts saying the filters would slow 
the internet, block legitimate sites, be easily bypassed and fall short 
of capturing all of the nasty content available online.

Despite this, he is pushing ahead with trials of the scheme using six 
ISPs - Primus, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1.

But even the trials have been heavily discredited, with experts saying 
the lack of involvement from the three largest ISPs, Telstra, Optus and 
iiNet, means the trials will not provide much useful data on the effects 
of internet filtering in the real-world.

Senator Conroy originally pitched the filters as a way to block child 
porn but - as ISPs, technical experts and many web users feared - the 
targets have been broadened significantly since then.

ACMA's secret blacklist, which will form the basis of the mandatory 
censorship regime, contains 1370 sites, only 674 of which relate to 
depictions of children under 18. A significant portion - 506 sites - 
would be classified R18+ and X18+, which is legal to view but would be 
blocked for everyone under the proposal.

This week Senator Conroy said there was "a very strong case for 
blocking" other legal content that has been "refused classification". 
According to the classification code, this includes sites depicting drug 
use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or "revolting and abhorrent 
phenomena" that "offend against the standards of morality".

And last month, ACMA added an anti-abortion website to its blacklist 
because it showed photographs of what appears to be aborted foetuses. 
The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 
10,000 sites and beyond.

Xenophon said instead of implementing a blanket mandatory censorship 
regime the Government should instead put the money towards educating 
parents on how to supervise their kids online and tackling "pedophiles 
through cracking open those peer-to-peer groups".

Technical experts have said the filters proposed by the Government would 
do nothing to block child porn being transferred on encrypted 
peer-to-peer networks.

"I'm very skeptical that the Government is going down the best path on 
this," said Xenophon.

"I commend their intentions but I think the implementation of this could 
almost be counter-productive and I think the money could be better spent."

The policy has attracted opposition from online consumers, lobby groups, 
ISPs, network administrators, some children's welfare groups, the 
Opposition, the Greens, NSW Young Labor and even the conservative 
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi, who famously tried to censor the chef 
Gordon Ramsay's swearing on television.

This week, a national telephone poll of 1100 people, conducted by Galaxy 
and commissioned by online activist group GetUp, found that only 5 per 
cent of Australians want ISPs to be responsible for protecting children 
online and only 4 per cent want Government to have this responsibility.

A recent survey by Netspace of 10,000 of the ISP's customers found 61 
per cent strongly opposed mandatory internet filtering with only 6.3 per 
cent strongly agreeing with the policy.

An expert report, handed to the Government last February but kept secret 
until December after it was uncovered by the Herald, concluded the 
proposed scheme was fundamentally flawed.

Even Labor has previously opposed ISP-level internet filtering when the 
Howard Government raised it as a method for protecting kids online.

"Unfortunately, such a short memory regarding the debate in 1999 about 
internet content has led the coalition to already offer support for 
greater censorship by actively considering proposals for unworkable, 
quick fixes that involve filtering the internet at the ISP level," Labor 
Senator Kate Lundy said in 2003.

-- 
 
Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au