[LINK] How filters work (was Re: Possible Letter to Conroy (the

[Stilgherrian]

Irene, a question for you...

On 21/03/2009, at 6:16 PM, rene wrote:
>> However, thinking about this, a thousand sites blocked, out of
>> millions (billions?) of websites is indeed silly. Hence, it seems to
>> me that the current lists of filtered sites, might appear perhaps
>> irrelevant to the government's real purpose.
>
> Yes, blocking content on the ACMA list of ~1K URLs (incl. over 50%  
> of which
> is legal for adults to view online and offline) is a completely  
> pointless
> exercise and waste of taxpayers' money, whatever their claimed
> purpose/objective is (which varies from week to week/month to month,  
> or did
> until the Minister commenced declining to respond to media enquiries
> several months ago).

Senator Conroy is now claiming that the government never intended to  
implement filtering of the entire ACMA blacklist, only the RC parts of  
it. His media advisor told me on Friday, "Also, might be worth noting  
that the blacklist has been around for years, as implemented by  
Coonan’s Government. It is not new and as you must know, we have  
indicated that we don’t intend to filter the whole list."

Conroy's media release last week included the paragraph:

"The Government has indicated an interest in using ISP-level filtering  
technology to block URLs that display content that is Refused  
Classification under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, including  
child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed  
instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that  
advocates the doing of a terrorist act.”

http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/014

Does this wash?

My memory (admittedly a faulty beast!) seems to hear him saying "the  
ACMA blacklist" and "just the ACMA blacklist", not "the RC portions of  
the ACMA blacklist".

Stil


-- 
Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com/
Internet, IT and Media Consulting, Sydney, Australia
mobile +61 407 623 600
fax +61 2 9516 5630
Twitter: stilgherrian
Skype: stilgherrian
ABN 25 231 641 421