rstuart,

It needs to be remembered that elements of a criminal offence must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. In respect of the girl on the album cover, that means it must be proved beyond reasonable doubt that she is depicted in a sexual context. The mere fact that some people might find the image sexual is not sufficient. If must also be proved beyond reasonable doubt that she is depicted in a way that would be likely to cause offence to a reasonable person. So, again, the fact that some people claim to be offended is not sufficient.

Now, the concept of proving things like that beyond reasonable doubt is a tad problematic, but I'd be inclined to think that no such proof could be forthcoming if there's any reasonable ambiguity.

While no fan of Conroy's filtering proposal, I don't read his form letter as saying that the IWF filter will simply be tacked onto our own. At most it appears to me that the ACMA would examine links added to the filter to see whether they meet the requirements for filtering under our existing filtering rules.

The IWF blocked the entire Wikipedia page. It's probably reasonable to suppose that the ACMA, as a body implementing statutory provisions (the IWF list is used voluntarily by ISPs in the countries that use it), would be more conservative, and even if it had formed the view that the image violated Australian law (which I doubt) would have blocked only the image.

Sylvia Else: "It's probably reasonable to suppose that the ACMA ... would be more conservative ... blocked only the image"

A surprising conclusion. As you know the filter will be porous. Leaving a URI embedded in a web page would be like waving a red flag to a bull - inviting someone who read the text to take the trouble to bypass it. The British implementations of filters return a fake "Page Not Found" (or perhaps a real 404 - I have not seen it) to the entire page, I presume for that very reason. It is either that, or they are trying to hide the effects of the filter itself. Probably both.

As for the how the IWF list is used - perhaps. Possibly more troubling is how the URL's will be judged. It is far too expensive to use the current ACMA process, which is a pity because the ACMA process is relatively transparent. So instead we have, according to the trail test, a bureaucrat deciding whether the ACMA would have judged the material to be objectionable. He must do this in secret of course - because the filter is porous, and so we will never know his decisions. The DBCDE's request for expression of interest for the trial therefore requires every participating ISP sign an NDA with the ACMA.

The end result is I guess we won't ever know for sure whether the image was judged child pornography, so we won't which of us is closer to the truth.

And as for what a judge would think of the image - well its all beside the point, isn't it? It is not a judge in an open court who is making the decisions.