The article: "The greatest concern of the blacklist being leaked is that it will provide a road map for those seeking to find these illegal sites. The blacklist will also provide vital clues to these people in their quest for finding like sites."

It reminds me the firebugs being blamed for the recent deaths in Victoria. Obviously there were the primary cause. But we all know the firebugs will be with us regardless of the law or retribution handed out. So if you know that firebugs will light disastrous fires, yet you still then go ahead build communities that will be decimated by the fires they light who is ultimately to blame?

Similarly, it was utterly predictable the ACMA blacklist would leak if widely disseminated. And disseminated it was - onto every PC that downloaded one of those free government filters. So it was handed out to man+god thousands and thousands of times, as it turns out.

So who is responsible for the harm caused by the leaking of the blacklist? Is it the people who leaked it, or the government who insisted on collecting it despite that fact they knew it would be leaked?

The ALP will now and forever, be seen by many Australians as the nation's key Fascist Movement. Next we'll be banning books and using bonfires to kill pagans to appease the fanatical, Christian Lobby Group.

I'm not sure why the ALP thinks it's a vote winner.

Rudd turned out to be more of a god-botherer than most of us expected, but this is ridiculous.

Considering none of his cabinet ministers will get out of bed without a poll and focus group telling them which side, it's a worry that they've crunched the numbers and somehow concluded that the majority of Australians want this.

Sancho: "I'm not sure why the ALP thinks it's a vote winner."

They can't possibly think that. The polls are very clear. I don't have a clue as to why they are perusing this, but it isn't that.

Then I can only guess it's out of a desire to appear firm on their policies, or an old-fashioned moral crusade.

If this is the way they think they'll reel in the Howardites, it's way off-track.

I see moral cowardice and hypocrisy here. Australia is a democratic country; ultimately, successive governments are there to do the electorate's bidding, not the over way round.

The country as a whole has been content for over a hundred years with a constitution that does not include a Bill of Rights guaranteeing freedom of expression, and there has been no popular momentum for the comparatively (relative to other Western jurisdictions) censorious Broadcasting Services Act to be changed, since it was enacted back in 1992.

It would seem that Australians want, or are at least not bothered, to have such a regime in place - so long as in private, at home, they can resort to the Web to access the same kind of porn that almost everyone else around the world can. And now Conroy proposes closing that loophole, making Web access consistent with all other mass media. I am tempted to say "Why are you so dismayed? You never previously saw anything wrong with the BSA, enacted by a democratically elected government acting on your behalf! You never previously felt that freedom of expression should be protected in law!"

Its painfully clear that much of the indignant hot air from male posters is motivated by the prospect of private access to the hard (but still consensual and legal in the US where it is produced) porn that they like and have become accustomed to, being taken away. But Aussie Blokes couldn't actually ADMIT as much, could they? No, indeed, we have to pretend that we are terribly concerned about slowing down broadband speed, that it won't work on technical grounds, ANYTHING but admit we want to see the porn.

You get what you deserve.