This is really all about control.The ruling oligarchy already have control of the mainstream media but the World Wide Web is a real and threatening wild child to their agenda of controlling what information can be accessed by the citizens.And information is,ultimately,power.

The pornography issue is just a convenient excuse.Parents are the ones responsible for what their children access on the media.This is really an issue of civil rights and the maintenance of a democratic society.

The Australian Gov can save a lot of cost by not reinventing the wheel here, just buy the tech off China, it works pretty good for them.
It's a great way to filter out information that your population shouldn't see or read.

Filtering of information could be important in some cases. In fact, Government takes responsibility for filtering of any traffic that should include also filtering information. Laws would imply.
The problem here could be in monetary outlay. I doubt that people making business from disseminating information via internet will stack for long with introduction of new filters by Australian government. They just will develop new programs. Thus any filter need to be redeveloped. That is endless money outlay. Information could be filtered for some insignificant time given significant financial outlay.
Means and ends have to be somehow balanced.

Conroy even censors his own site...

'I find this one rather humorous, on Conroy's website, if you take a look at the right hand side there is the "cloud" for searched items, the more searched the phrase or word is, the larger the item is.

Looking at the source code of the site, there is the entire list of words that the script uses to determine the cloud words and how prevelant they are. Basically breaks it down to an array, counts and then sets the size based on how frequent it is etc...

In the script that generates the cloud, there is a line that says basically if the seach term is "ISP Filtering" to skip and go onto the next.

In the time I was on the site, there were about 16 instances of "ISP Filtering" in the cloud, and only about 5 instances of E-Health, though ISP Filtering did not show in the cloud....'

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1391908.html

'The source code mentions

// Script Authour: Aleks Bochniak

because it is a version of the code from the tutorial on Aleks' page here...

Oh, now that is just GOLD. they can't even manage their own basic webdesign without some online tutorials. Good luck censoring our entire counties internet.'

The big question that I have is the following: "Who is going to decide what information will be taken out and why this particular information has to be taken out?". And what if they wrong?

Applause! Great article. You included quite a few novel arguments I haven't heard before. No rational person could support a filter based on RC.

No rational person would support an internet filter AT ALL.
A quick rundown:

-sites, forums and networks for extreme illegal interests like pedophiles and snuff enthusiasts, the only material with a moral premise for banning- would merely result in these people unsatisfied without their online fix. In the past we have caught these people (in particular, the ones actively engaging in the behaviour) by detectives accessing these networks and luring them in.

-Plans for making bombs, weapons? Too easy- anyone can make a gun or hand-to-hand weapon- and you'd learn enough bomb-making advice from high-school chemistry. And again, detectivework helps nab terrorists by tracking reciepts of people that purchased huge amounts of fertiliser and ignition material- but don't have a landclearing/replantation career.

-Extreme preaching? Most important to NOT be censored!
I don't know about you but I'm more comfortable being able to understand what these people say instead of not even hearing about it.
Think about it- if a terrorist attacked us and made a statement, wouldn't YOU want to know why?

The ONLY thing worth censoring is police information prior to arrests and military intelligence not associated with any scandals or illegal acts- which we already do quite successfully.

Excellent article.

Of course, I agree with Arved von Brasch that the main threat is the power that it gives to Governments to censor, at will, sites that it considers a threat, and that should be the major focus of the anti-Internet Filtering campaign.

Nevertheless it is most helpful to also understand the technical problems posed by Filtering and I congratulate Arved for having explained them so well. Now, we can all understand what the truth behind Conroy's claims of the success of the trials.

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Have any polls been taken on this issue? I believe I heard once that the overwhelming majority were opposed. Even if not, that would change very quickly if there was a proper public debate on this. So there is no way that this legislation should stand any chance of becoming law in a properly functioning democracy.

About three weeks ago, I learnt from a member of Greens Senator Scott Ludlam's staff that they are, in fact, expecting the Liberals and Nationals to back away from their previous strong opposition.

I had put in an e-mail to Senator Ludlam early last year that they simply move a motion in the Senate that it be put to a referendum. However when I phoned his office around September last year, I was told that opposition by the Coalition to filtering was practically guaranteed. Implicitly, it seemed that there was not urgent need for a referendum motion to be put. This still made me nervous that, at a coming election, many voters would face an impossible choice (even if only on a two-party-preferred basis) between the Coalition on the one had with its past record of Work Choices, the Iraq War, Telstra privatisation, etc. and the Labor party on the other hand with Mandatory Internet Filtering. Nevertheless, I did not pursue further my request that a motion for a referendum be put at that stage.

Now, that has changed.

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The serious risk that Internet Filtering could soon become law should be considered unacceptable, even, if, for example, the rough edges were to be softened by, for example, Labor Senator Kate Lundy's proposed amendments.

Yet, when I put to one of Scott Ludlam's staffers, two weeks ago on the phone that they should go ahead and move a motion for a referendum, as I had urged earlier, she told me that Scott Ludlam would not.

Why I asked?

Because, she told me they did not expect that it would be carried.

I should have asked her how she knew that.

Furthermore, since then, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has suggested that her Government's health system reforms be put to a referendum at the Federal elections. Surely, especially now, a motion for a referendum on Mandatory Internet Filtering at this year's Federal Election could hardly be depicted as unreasonable.

If the Coalition were to vote against such a motion, then surely that would give the Greens a perfect opportunity to differentiate themselves positively from the Coalition and gain a large number of votes at their expense as well as at the expense of the Labor Party.

And if the Coalition were to agree, then better still. The public would assuredly drive a large blunt stake through the heart of Mandatory Internet Filtering at the referendum. The Greens should still expect do very well from a grateful public and certainly would do a lot better than if they were to remain on their current trajectory.

How could the Greens lose?

Why won't they seize this opportunity with both hands?

That is an excellent article .

While I normally would be against any sort of censorship , my attitude to Net Censor/Filtering was set in concrete in favor .
I don't like the Porn sites that exploit very young ladies even if they are "age of consent".

In my view it is absolutely "Bent" to have what looks like a child about Height 5 ft coupled up to a giant Afro , blood visible .
This is sick and extremely cruel , the aficionado's of this stuff need help .
The other issue here is "Fisting" here the aficionado's are satisfying their lust for blatant "Cruelty" , by any Judgment these situations should not happen and should not be allowed to continue .

The 'Net' is impossible to Police so some other way needs to protect victims possibly living next door to you .

'Age of Consent' caters for 'normal' situations in Life , exploitation is different , should A of C be different for explicit Visual Art's ? Definitely Police-able , might fit into international law enforcement if somebody can decide at what age these Transgressions against Humanity can take place ?

You are right Conroys Gigabite motor mower will not work , unfortunatly .

You are right Shazbaz. When I consider that people acting on socialist political opinion have been responsible for the deaths of over 150 million people in the last hundred years, and many people openly profess socialist opinions online today, definitely that should be banned too.

Also, I think lots of things online are "Bent" too, so they should be banned, right?

Great article. Secrecy + censorship can only lead to evil.
Manorina has it spot on...Control.
I'd go so far to say our culture is threatened by new radicals.
Folks used to say "its a free country" and mean it, and be proud of it.
We now find it acceptable for folks to want more control than is appropriate for us, and for them. Why would anyone want such control?
It started with prohibition which has proven that unethical yet profitable wars can be everlasting, ever growing and become "unseen" in the sense that folks no longer believe there is an alternative.
Do folks remember the media lead-up to the Iraq war? How would you like that sort of "single message" approach to be applied to the net?
Downright scary that Conroy and his fellow censors hasn't been pulled into line on this one. (I suspect that Liberal and Labour have the tax-free religious groups driving this one. Greens may be the only secular way to vote now. Bummer.)

Peter Hume I am surprised and disappointed at your angry response to my post , I thought I was an anti Socialist I am now tragic having found out otherwise . I am going to give all your Posts a Brown eye from now on , was it because I refused to vote for Sir William McMahon , how 'DiD' you find out !

Could you please give a breakdown of those 150,000,000 deaths you attribute to "people acting on socialist political opinion", together with your sources, Peter Hume?

If there is any basis to it, then socialism would truly have to be a monstrous ideology, wouldn't it? Any adherent would, by definition have to be far more evil than Hitler, Genghis Kahn and Timur combined.

In comparison, the devastation of Indo-China in the sixties and seventies and the deaths of at least the order of 3,000,000 would seem like school yard bullying.

Even Hitler's Final Solution would seem no worse than the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre by comparison.

Clearly the toll of deaths caused by Stalin (disregarding WW2) supposedly in the name of socialism seems to me to have been around the order of 10 million at least. I would be happy to look at evidence which could establish as accurately as possible what that figure would be and what would have been the result of famine, and, of course, war. Of course mass murder by Stalin's regime should be condemned unreservedly, but let's not forget that many of Stalin's first victims were socialists and a good many socialists would hotly contest that what he did was in any way inspired by socialism.

Apart from that I would like to know what else makes up Peter Hume's total figure of 150,000.

Let's not also forget, if it had not been for President Kennedy defying his Generals again and again and again, a pre-emptive nuclear strike would have almost certainly been launched against the USSR with at least 10's of millions, if not hundreds of millions of deaths.

If the US military-industrial complex had survived the counterstrike intact, who would have been next on the US Generals cross-hairs? China? IndoChina?

I suggest people closely watch this 30' video "Beneath the hype: Is Iran close to nukes?" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DxyA4LT7MA of retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern and then contemplate how close we may be from the US launching an all out war across central Asia and the Middle east which could well involve Russia also.

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So, it would seem only by good luck that the rulers of the US have not been able to commit mass murder on a scale even larger than what they have accused 'socialism' of having committed.

In reality, I believe these sorts of ludicrous figures that Peter Hume has cited are inventions by CIA-funded propagandists in order to excuse the real past and planned future crimes of the US Government.

Shazbaz - what percentage of people would you think a) are invloved in these acts and b) search for them online?

I would think it is a very small percentage.

Internet filtering is a sledgehammer approach to addressing a small list of problems that are affecting a small segment of the population that would be better handled using some of the suggestions in the article.

Plenty of people get bashed and killed every weekend due to alcohol. Should we ban this too?

Socialism has progressed a lot in the last 70 years. Look to Scandanavian countries for how well Democratic Socialism works in the modern world. The increasing social problems in Australia, US and UK are primarily due to one thing - an ever increasing wealth gap. Health care and education are becoming more and more geared to making this gap even worse. We have an upper elite becoming richer and smaller and an ever increasing lower class becoming more and more angry.

A free and open Internet may be our only safeguard against our society sliding into outright dictatorship (as if we have not slid far enough in that direction already).

If that continues, it seems unlikely to me that, overall, the number of crimes, that, some claim, the Internet facilitates, will diminish.

But the scale of other far more serious crimes against humankind, particularly crimes of war, that the free Internet of today, to some extent, keeps in check is likely to vastly increase.

So, why are so many people in these discussions intent on keeping the discussion so focussed on abberent sexual material made accessible through the Internet to the expense of of this far more critical question?

Stephen Conroy is wasting our money & time on this draconian internet filtering policy idea. Its common knowledge that the vast majority of
unwanted content online is distributed through email and file-sharing networks, NOT WEB PAGES! The filter can be circumvented easily anyway by anybody who is technically competent (or just google how to bypass the filter). Many legal sites will inevitably get caught up in this filter because it operates by searching for "keywords". I can imagine something like a "rape crisis centre" being blocked because of the "rape" word for example!

Fundamentally this is COSTLY and UNNECESSARY.

There are plenty of alternatives too; like distributing software to parents to use at home, or making the filter opt-in rather than mandatory. Genuine public consultation (mainly from parents) would be a very good idea Mr Conroy.

ISP filtering will detract resources from tackling child abuse and waste tens of millions of dollars as well. Tackling illegal content like child abuse is really just a convenient excuse to attempt blanket control.

Its funny we sit here criticizing China & Iran for their internet filtering & censorship & here we are proposing to block the free flow of information, much of which is not illegal in any manner. This is just about the control of that flow of information & the control of its citizens.

This makes me feel like spewing up live online. So who's voting Labor in the fast approaching election? (not that I think Tony Abbott is any credible or desirable alternative... sigh)

D B Valentine wrote, "The filter can be circumvented easily anyway by anybody who is technically competent ..."

Whilst this may be true, I believe the over-emphasis on this argument actually serves to diminish the threat that filtering poses to free speech and democracy. It diverts our attention from the fact that large numbers of ordinary users will NOT be able to circumvent the filters.

When filtering inevitably comes to be used used to censor sites that the government considers a threat, most people will not have the means to discover facts contrary to the lies of the corporate mass media (e.g. WMD's, 9/11, union-bashing, privatisation, etc.).

On a two-party preferred basis, many of us are truly caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

It is absolutely vital that third parties opposed to filtering gain achieve a massive vote at the next elections.

If only the Greens would show real leadership, instead of confining themselves to manoeuvring and wheeling and dealing in a Senate that seems almost certainly stacked with an overwhelming majority that does not have our best interests at heart, they could easily be assured of winning at least one Senate seat in each state (or at least two in a double dissolution full Senate election) and picking up a number of lower houses as well.

As I wrote earlier, as Gillard is openly talking of putting her Government's proposed health reforms (whatever their merit or lack of may be) what possible reason could the Greens have not to try to make Mandatory Internet Filtering to a referendum?

My apologies. The conclusion of my last post should have been:

... what possible reason could the Greens have to not try to make Mandatory Internet Filtering a referendum issue?