[LINK] the filtering background and motivations thereof..

[Stilgherrian]

On 21/03/2009, at 9:25 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> To fill a mostly-nerd in here, would someone be able to point to some
> reasonably authoritative sources behind the actual motivation behind
> the current push by Labor to implement it?

Two two best-documented sources on this are...

1. Irene Graham's Libertus.net. The two four links on her site are the  
key ones, and especially the very first.

About the Federal Labor Government's Mandatory ISP Filtering /  
Censorship 'Plan' 2009
http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-au-govplan.html

Comparison of Labor's Plan with other countries: UK, Norway, Sweden,  
Denmark, Finland, Canada, New Zealand, etc.
http://libertus.net/censor/ispfiltering-gl.html

Statistics Laundering: false and fantastic figures about the  
prevalence of 'child pornography' material on Web sites etc.
http://libertus.net/censor/resources/statistics-laundering.html

About existing AU Internet censorship regime
http://libertus.net/censor/netcensor.html


2. Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has lots of good material, but  
the best start might be...

Time Line of Mandatory ISP Filtering Proposals 2003-2006
http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-blocking-timeline/


I've also written about the way petitions from conservative Christian  
groups were the trigger for specific action, based on Irene Graham's  
research.

Petitions to parliament drove ALP’s Internet filtering policy
http://stilgherrian.com/politics/petitions_drove_filtering_policy/


More speculatively, it's interesting to note that the ALP's Cyber  
Safety Policy appeared just before the last federal election in 2007  
-- much later than the main block of policy documents and it's still  
on a separate web page. There's plenty of off-record mumblings that  
preference deals were done with Family First in order to gain the vote  
of Senator Steve Fielding in the Senate.

Certainly Senator Fielding is in the Senate on a remarkably small  
primary vote, and analysts have told me that preferences flowing from  
family First votes were important for the ALP in some electorates --  
but I don't have any convenient linkage.

The Coalition matched the ALP's compulsory filter rhetoric in the "me  
too!" stage of the election campaign.


I've also observed in couple of my articles that the key non- 
government proponents of compulsory censorship are Clive Hamilton, who  
started his push in 2002 or so, and Jim Wallace of the (conservative)  
Australian Christian Lobby. Wallace's taking points closely match  
Hamilton's, and I suspect a connection.

“Clive Hamilton, you’re really starting to shit me!”
http://stilgherrian.com/politics/clive-hamilton-youre-really-starting-to-shit-me/

Clive Hamilton doesn’t quite win “Cnut of the Week”
http://stilgherrian.com/politics/clive-hamilton-not-cnut-of-the-week/

Christian Lobby: The New Lions Of Clean Feed
http://newmatilda.com/2009/02/02/christian-lobby-are-new-lions-clean-feed

Jim Wallace’s pro-censorship lies and distortions
http://stilgherrian.com/politics/jim-wallaces-pro-censorship-lies-and-distortions/

There's also Bernadette McMenamin of Child wide, a charity which  
fights child sexual exploitation. However she appears to be a less- 
important figure, in my opinion rather unsophisticated politically and  
completely out of her depth technically. I suspect her role is simply  
to wave the "we must protect the children" flag when needed -- which  
was fine when her role was to tell scary stories about sexual  
exploitation at fundraising events, but she's starting to become a  
liability in the debate because she falls apart when pressured. It  
appears


Hope that helps,

Stil


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